


The Wars of the Houses

by Broba



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Slavery, F/M, Knifeplay, Master/Slave, Multi, Seriously this is majorly AU I don't want to hear it about how non-canon it is, Slave Trade, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2015-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-16 10:08:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 55,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broba/pseuds/Broba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt that included a lot of worldbuilding- the AU setting is quite fantastical and takes place in the city, where humans trolls and dersite carapaces co-exist in their quarters. A weak mutant troll slave is bought by the lady of the Rose House, and so falls into the complex plotting and intrigue between the human noble houses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
The raindrops fell white in the second season, they made a milky mist in the air and left ashy deposits where they fell and dried. By the end of second season the entire city was often painted pale grey, and by studying how the splashes touched the tenements and towers a perceptive observer could read the prevailing winds of the year to come.  
  
Up and down the Serpentine Stair the market-goers walked from the upper to the lower market, carrying goods and shipping items to be bought and sold. The upper market was open to the sun and generally considered the more reputable, while the lower market spread like a stain under the winding body of the Serpentine Stair itself and was coated in shadows from the structures above, the lower market was generally peopled by the slaves and proxies of the higher folk above. To walk through the lower market was to find a route through winding and temporary alleyways in-between stalls and tents that were set up in a haphazard fashion. As darkness fell lanterns and fat tallow candles burned merrily, and from above the marked looked like a sea of fire with floating islands formed by black roofs. According to local legend the paths through the lower market naturally formed spiralling whorls that followed the route of the Serpentine Stair, as if when it touched the ground it dived beneath the surface and the patterns of it's stone body continued on.  
  
Hawkers stood by wide braziers sold waxpaper bags of hot ground nuts drizzled with salt and honey for a quarter-penny a bag. In second season the nuts were considered a traditional delicacy beloved of children and the poor, who could add them to potatoes or rice to make a filling dish. Around the edges of the lower market a ring of streets presented a border of shop-faces. Most of these were concerned with food, largely cheap hot-seat eateries where for a penny a man could sit and be given a full if plain meal and a jug of small beer or watered wine. There were pie shops and mash dens, coffee and chocolate houses and soup kitchens alongside noodle bars and flat bread ovens. All except for the north quarter of the marked which was fenced by the Gabardine road, that was given over almost entirely to tailors, haberdashers, dressmakers and seamstresses for some tradition lost to memory.  
  
Up and down the rows, slaves laboured under heavy baskets filled with the goods their masters had sent them for. Both humans and trolls lived under the collar. Only born dersites were exempt, and nor could they own slaves either. The laws concerning their economic activities within the city were strict and heavily proscribed, laid down by the various councils going back centuries. Every year the dersite quorum of the council pressed for increased rights, and most often they were either ignored and out-voted, or else politely reminded that with the extra rights they demanded would come certain responsibilities that they were presently shielded from. While dersites were committed to the protections offered themselves and their strange religion, they were unable to bargain effectively in other areas. In total, the city enjoyed stability and was largely free of war and strife so long as the various factions kept to their quarters and mingled openly only where it was socially acceptable to do so. The humans were more then happy to keep a distance from the trolls, who were in their opinion hidebound and difficult, uncultured at best and dangerous at worst. Similarly the trolls were wary of the more meritocratic humans who practised a scandalously meritocratic way of life wherein sufficient financial acumen and success in business could in certain cases actually permit some measure of social mobility- an anathema to the trolls. In between them, the dersites did whatever it was they did, and neither side particularly paid attention to the lowly carapace-bound figures scuttling about their odd errands and routines.  
  
Those who could afford to do so wore heavy oilcloth capes in the second season with similar wide brimmed hats and scarves to protect against the white rain. In the lower market such swaddled figures were relatively few and far between, and mostly the denizens of that place had to make do with whatever they could throw around their shoulders. The constant tramping footsteps and the bowing gait of row upon row of hunched and labouring backs formed a rhythmic counterpoint to the airless progress of two such cloaked figures who drifted down the Serpentine Stair into the lower market. They drifted like floating white cirrus clouds among the stormy thunderheads of the ash-dirtied clothes and rags of the lower market-goers. Underneath the rising body of the Serpentine Stair where it left the cobblestones and soared and twisted upward to the upper market, a row of kennel-like cages nestled in, before a wide stone block on which slaves were auctioned to the highest bidder. This being the lower market, the slaves were uniformly criminals, biological freaks, or the terminally unlucky and they were often sold in living job lots to mining concerns and farmers looking for cheap and expendable labour.  
  
A high whistle sounded somewhere, and an unseen engine laboured as a load of bales were hoisted up vertically to the upper marked by a winch arrangement powered by a steam boiler that threw white and hot smoke across the entire walk way before the slave pens. The steam was warm and alive like breath, some of the slaves reached out bare limbs through the bars to enjoy the slight comfort of that warmth, others dream back knowing that it would leave damp on them to grow chill in time and invite sickness. Some didn't care. The whistle piped again and the gouts of steam ceased, revealing two white cloaked figures standing before the auction block, as though they had been waiting patiently for the clouds to deliver them.  
  
The auctioneer was a tall human who called out each lot in a practised tone, high and unnatural and full of short clipped words but good to carry over distances. He stood by an upturned barrel, on which he rapped a wooden orb when he made a sale. His attendant was a burly troll with thick, winding horns who dragged each one up roughly and held them up if they looked to be sagging. The slaves for their part stared out with beady eyes at each potential purchaser, marking out the ones who looked merciful or cruel, deciding who they would encourage to bid with a smile or a  confident nod, and who they would discourage by slouching, coughing or feigning contagious wet-lung.  
  
The crier motioned and the next lot was brought up to the auction block- or rather, he was shoved listlessly forwards, and stepped where he was pushed, and stood hunched over and uncaring. If he saw the people passing he made no show of it, and they showed a similar disinterest in him. The crier knew better then to try to put a shine on old copper, as the saying went, and made no attempt to hide the fact that this one would be sold to whoever would give a price- any price. The slave was a youngish troll, beaten down and in poor health, and the crier mentioned in the interests of fairness and public sale laws that he was a mutant and so would be disposed of by the city authorities if no owner could be found to take responsibility for him. His hair was a ragged mop that was knotted and filthy, sprouting unimpressive buds of horns. He was covered in bruises and healed over scars, he had a noticeable limp and he looked as though he was almost starved to death.  
  
The two cloaked figures were impassive and unreadable; one of them was noticeably taller then the other, in all other ways they appeared identical even down to their heavy gloves. The only hint to their potential identities was the lack of visible horns, suggesting humans. The smaller one made a gesture, touching the taller on the arm. That one looked down at it's companion, and the swathed head shook in disapproval but the same gesture was made again- a touch on the arm, more insistent this time.  
  
The taller figure took a step forward and raised one a hand to the crier, holding up a hand palm-outward with thumb splayed wide, then tilting the hand to the side sharply. The sign indicated five copper pennies and the crier acknowledged it with a bark, rapping the barrel-head and calling out for offers. It was the amount a good man might earn in an entire day of labour, but an appallingly cheap price for a slave. The crier managed to rouse up a little interest, and another bidder added a quarter-penny to the bid. The tall figure looked back with a shrug, and their companion nodded. In response the tall one made the five-penny gesture again, this time using his other hand to hold up to fingers. Five pennies and two quarter-pennies. The crier went back and forth, but there was little interest in the scrawny slave. The final bid was six pennies and three quarter-pennies, and with a rap on the barrel-head the deal was done.  
  
The slave was dressed only in a pair of ragged cloth culottes that were cut short at the knee, and a coarse hempen blanket was thrown around his shoulders to offer some measure of public decency before he was pushed politely but meaningfully toward his new owners. The price agreed was a low one, but for a mutant and a weak one at that it was more then the crier had hoped for, he was eager to resolve the deal and see the back of the buyers. As soon as they crossed the invisible line that to his mind separated his auctioneering territory from the wider market the deal was complete and irrevocable, and more to the point a useless slave was no longer his concern in the least.  
  
The slave had a wide leather collar with a brass ring stapled to the front. The tall one who had overseen his purchase hooked a gloved finger through it and dragged him close, looking around suspiciously and urging their smaller fellow on. They were insistent on leaving the lower market as soon- and peacefully- as possible. They ascended the stair, the shorter one wanted to pause for a bag of ground nuts with salt and honey but was politely and firmly rebuffed by the taller companion. The Serpentine Stair took them slowly but inexorably upward to the level of the upper market, which was laid out in a grid patter of permanent thoroughfares interspersed with mosaic tiled plazas and flower beds. The streets were cleaner here, and the city rose on a natural hill toward the richer and more established parts of the human quarter. The humans seemed to place a stock on sheer height which the troll population found to be a quaint notion, the higher the King's Breath road led them the taller the buildings became. Their upper stories were whitewashed by the seasons' rains, along their west-facing walls and prominences. That meant that a wind from the west would dominate the year, which was a sign of unseasonable rains and humid mists. A poor sign for the year to come, which boded ill for more vulnerable crops and the health of the city.  
  
The slave was entirely mute as they walked, offering neither help nor hindrance to them but following behind a respectful two paces as they walked. The taller figure was similarly terse and uncommunicative, but the smaller one did try to engage in conversation a little. Pulling down the scarf that masked most of it's face, the figure revealed feminine features and spoke with a oft, but confident, voice. She seemed more curious about the comings and goings around them, and would ask questions and point out interesting features. She asked the slave his name, but he just shrugged and remained mute. The taller figure was far more direct and constantly tugged on the sleeve of the female to urge her on. That one was a male, and spoke to her only once.  
“Come, we shouldn't be in public like this.”  
“I have you to protect me,” she pointed out.  
“You do, and I will, but even I can only do so much. The situation is not good, I don't want you seen on the streets at the moment.”  
“Can I not go where I choose?” She tilted her small, pointed chin up and stared at him firmly.  
“No,” he turned to her and pulled down his own scarf, the better for her to hear him clearly without having to raise his voice, “or, I should say, you can go exactly where you choose. And naturally you will want to make the most sensible choices, so we do not need to discuss this further. Come.”  
“You're insufferable,” she said, though there was a laugh in her voice.  
“I am,” he replied flatly, “and famed for it.”  
  
That was the end of the discussion, and he'd hear no more of it. They ascended the winding cobblestones of Candle street where it met onto Tar-And-Feathers, there to cross the Aching bridge over the river, made milky white by the seasons' rain. The river was called the Five Children where it entered the city, coming down from the high mountain peaks above even the level of the human quarter. It wound around and down, through locks and waterfalls and natural slopes, and where it left the city it was wide and brown and sluggish, and called the river Standeasy.  
  
The blocks of houses and tall towers became first wood-and-stone, and then stone, and finally dressed marble as they went. At each street their slave expected to be brought to a place of work to be directed in labour, and at each street he was led on yet higher and amid yet greater opulence.  
  
They went under a stone arch in a strong high wall and onto a street that wound back behind the blank stone face of a high building, and on the other side fenced by iron railings with spearhead tops that overlooked a high drop.  
  
Ropes were tossed from the top of the high perch above them and men, cloaked as they were, rappelled down with shocking speed to land around the small party, with knives drawn. They approached cautiously, but still with clear intent in their baleful eyes to mean harm to the group. The slave gave out a low sigh and dropped to his knees automatically. If he were to be murdered then he didn't intend on putting up a futile fight, and if he were not to be then he accepted his fate with equanimity and hoped only to avoid too much pain. The woman gave out a cry but the man was silent. He tossed aside his hat to clear his vision, revealing a tuft of ash-blond hair that flared up from his forehead and was cropped down around his ears and nape. He flexed his hands and knives dropped from his sleeves into his waiting hands. The left-hand knife was longer and curved at the end to make a bill-hook, much like a longshoreman's tool, and the right-hand knife was shorter but tapered to a lethal killing-tip, a knifeman's fighting dirk like many carried at night and to dark places.  
  
The men who surrounded them knew the threat and circled him warily. He stood in front of the female, who backed against the railing, and the slave. He stated clearly from his positioning that they would have her after his demise and not before, and the assailants came to him in acceptance of that.  
“Leave it,” said one of them, the leader, a leathery-tanned man with a large nick cut out of one ear that made his face look lopsided, “walk away from this business. The girl has to answer to us, you don't.”  
“This business is mine, and I have answers enough here for both of us,” the ash-blond man hefted his knives and grinned darkly.  
“As you like,” said one-ear with a grin, “take him, lads!”  
  
One of the quartet was a little more bold and eager then his fellows, or perhaps more quick on his feet and a courageous. He ran and swung his knife. The ash-blond met it with hie left-hand knife, the bill-hook caught the attacker on the wrist and pulled it away, and he darted in with the dirk in his right hand to stab, and stab him up in-between the ribs. Ash-blond had a thumb on the blade to steady it, and needled his man five times in the time it took to take a breath, letting out a gout of blood and a surprised soft cry like a deathly sigh from the man. Ash-blond dropped him and he curled instinctively around his middle, clawing impotently at his ribs as he drowned in blood in short order.  
  
The first attacker had been foolish, the next two came at him in a more co-ordinated fashion, while one-ear took a step back to let them have at it. Ash-blond swept his left-hand knife in a semicircle before him, clearing space with the long bill-hook while his killing dirk waited, tucked in safely by his side and ready to needle the next man who left the slightest opening. Ash-blond kicked out suddenly, striking one of the attackers on the shin and knocking him off-balance for a second. The dirk was out in an instant and took the man's eye, bursting it to jelly and darting back to his side again in a quick thrust. The man screamed and fell, rolling away and cupping his hands over his face. He scrabbled on the cobblestones and made to flee, unwilling to lose more then one precious eye in a day. That left Ash-blonde facing one somewhat unwilling fighter who came at him again, and one-ear who was showing more reticence now. Ash-blonde snapped out the bill-hook, striking the man below the nose with the blunt curved front edge, the man cried out and thrust ineffectually. Ash-blonde caught his arm and span, throwing him at the railings where the man collided. Ash-blonde ducked and heaved, getting a shoulder under the man's crotch and heaving him up and over the railings neatly to let him fall screaming to crash through a tiled roof.  
  
One-ear stuttered and backed away as his three accomplices were butchered before him like so much offal and carrion.  
“Now my arm is warm!” Cried Ash-blonde, “I'm ready to start fighting!”  
“The devils have you then! You and she too!”  
“Aye, and let them come!”  
One-ear turned and made to flee. Ash-blonde drew back his arm to make a throw but his companion put a shaking hand on his shoulder and bid him to stop, and take them home.  
  
The fight had lasted no more then twenty seconds perhaps, and two men were either dead or near enough, one was half blinded, and one of the attackers survived whole only because he fled. The slave stared at his new owners wide-eyed in shock, his arms curled around his knees and rocking gently. Ash-blond fitted his left-hand knife and right-hand knife back in their concealed sheaths and beckoned to him. His gloves were wet and red.  
“Come along now. I'll not ask twice, mark you.”  
The slave got up and pulled away, unwilling to be touched, but he followed them without comment.  
  
“You know who they were,” said ash-blonde softly as they walked on hurriedly.  
“We don't know anything.”  
“Peonies, had to be.”  
“It wouldn't be wise to make accusations we cannot back up.”  
“Aye, and more so to pretend we don't know our enemy. They won't give in, and they're close to drawing in the Amaranth's into an alliance against you m'lady.”  
“Not here, this is talk not for the streets.”  
“Ah, at last, a sensible amount of caution out of you!”  
  
The slave kept his own counsel and said nothing as he was led along the streets to where a human home towered above them, incomprehensible marble facings leading to towers, crenelations, roofs with broad red tiles and what seemed an incomprehensible maze of bizarre architectural flourishes to the troll eyes of the slave.  
  
Heavy gates were opened to admit them to a flourishing garden and as they entered the house proper an attendant guard came to relieve them of their heavy cloaks. If anything was thought of the ragged slave, nothing was said. As the doors closed firmly ash-blonde was already talking to the guard.  
“Have armed men brought up, my lady Rose is not to be alone at any time- not for a moment!”  
The slave blinked at that, the human female was one of their nobles, though he knew little of how humans arranged their castes, as haphazardly as they did their homes it seemed.  
“You are being overwrought,” remarked the lady, “I do not need to be coddled.”  
“Indeed you do!” Her companion snapped, “if I was in the employ of the Peonies or the Amaranths then I assure you I would be watching your home and waiting for a moment when you walked alone to strike. Perhaps when you took the air in the garden, perhaps when you slept in your bed, I would be waiting for that moment with a quick dagger for your throat, my lady Rose.”  
“We do not know that the Amaranths are involved at all.”  
“If they aren't yet, then I'll wager you a shiny copper penny that they will be soon.”  
  
Attention soon turned to the slave who had been left unceremoniously to stand alone in the middle of the entryway to the house. He simply looked down and waited, ignoring the pale pink-veined marble floor and the plush carpeting. None of it mattered to him in the least, and he simply waited.  
  
“You're a dear, and my truest right hand,” said lady Rose, “I'll be ruled by you in this alone, because you know best in these matters.”  
“Aye true, and don't forget it lest I needs must find a new employer. Never alone, you hear me, m'lady?”  
“Very well, never alone.”  
  
The man turned and walked toward the slave. He was tall and thin, and under his cloak he wore a mail shirt over a quilted white tabard with maroon silk trews tucked into practical looking boots buckled down tightly. His arms were bare to the wrists, where he had the sheaths to his weapons strapped against his forearms.  
“You, slave. Look at me.”  
The slave looked up obediently, and silently.  
“You serve my lady Rose, she of the Rose House, that is your sign and your blood oath now, do you understand?”  
The slave nodded gravely. It was the Rose House that he would serve, that he would swear a blood oath upon, should he be called to.  
“You may refer to her as your mistress, and if you show the slightest disrespect I'll take off your ears. Show more then slight, and I'll have an eye or two, hey?”  
The slave nodded again, impassively.  
“Dirk, you are loading him with too much to bear all at once,” said lady Rose with a sigh, “the boy is no doubt tired, as am I. Let us have a little peace.”  
“Peace!” Replied the man called Dirk, named for his weapon, “I'll love and adore it should I find any, m'lady!” He gave her a wry grin but relented as she wished.  
  
The lady Rose wore a long coat beneath the cloak in a pinkish hue with silvery buttons that covered her from neck to knee. She removed it to reveal a long shift in black velvet beating the sign of her house at the breast and with purple slashed sleeves. They proceeded into the house and a reception room where a log fire was burning under the gaze of the diamond tiled glass bay window. The lady went to a chair, which Dirk insisted on moving away from sight of the windows before he would let her sit. Wherever she went he seemed to fuss about her like a bird, though a predator for all that. If he was her bondsman, still he served her with the attentive care of born kin. The slave went to the fireplace and knelt automatically on the stone tiles beside it, placing himself properly that he could be called upon by any occupant of the room.  
“Well then,” said Dirk when he was finally satisfied and took a stool opposite the lady Rose to sit upon, “you have had your trip outside and visited the market as you wished, and only two men had to die. Was the day well spent?”  
For her part the lady just nodded demurely and said, “yes. If my enemies had done nothing then it would have told us just as much as we learned from having them assault us.”  
“True enough. That's something I suppose, but the Peonies will want blood for blood you know.”  
“That's what I have you for.”  
Dirk grunted, “and what of the slave. What do you have him for?” Dirk pointed a thumb in the direction of the fireplace, already he was speaking of the slave as an object no different to a piece of furniture.  
“We need to be seen as a force in the city, both socially and politically, and that means taking steps to show that we can operate openly without fear. The household is nearly empty at present, and we cannot seem few, or weak.”  
“Why pick that one then,” said Dirk bluntly.  
Lady Rose just smiled to herself, “I don't know. I just like that one.”


	2. Chapter 2

The Rose House was extensive, as all the noble houses were, but dilapidated in places and almost empty. The household had once been served by an extensive network of kin, bonds and slaves but no more. Dust gathered in dark corners and leaks in the various roofs had let in the rain in places, leaving entire rooms splashed pure brilliant white with ash. Paintings along the Long Gallery told the story of the house through the generations as the Rose lords and ladies had in their turn taken to the position and in time had departed.  
  
The principal enemy of the Rose House at present was of course the Peony House, currently under the lordship of the present Lord Peony who had made public his enmity towards the Roses. The Peonies were closely allied to the Amaranth House who, it was assumed, would support them in the event of open conflict with the Roses. Should it come to that then the Rose House, at its' current level of support and force of arms within the houses, would certainly be annihilated. For all that, the servants of the Roses were unfailingly loyal and had formed a small but dedicated corps around lady Rose.  
  
All this was explained to the young troll slave by an elderly retainer who guided him about the house and showed him the principal areas where his duties would lie. His training in the ways of the house had been left in the care of the old man, who was less then happy about it and took pains to remind the troll of the fact. In short, he felt it was beneath him to be guiding the lowest of the low through their duties when he had far more important things to attend to. The lifespans of trolls were far more variable then those of humans, and the slave was unused to seeing a human as old as this. He showed the first flicker of curiosity as he was led about, snatching sidewards glances at the long white hair and whiskers of his guide as he made his way with a firm stride that belied his age. In fact, the slave had been delivered into the care of the head steward of House Rose, a man who in years past held considerable authority and power.  
  
Lady Rose had called him to the Long Gallery and he had arrived dramatically, sweeping into the room with a billow of black cloaks. His gown was fringed in white and framed a pale wrinkled head beneath snowy locks, which gave him a cold and wintry aspect. This was only enhanced by piercing gray eyes that stared evenly. He was as tall as Dirk and towered over lady Rose, he tended to tower over everyone like a stately ebony column.  
“Rookfeather is here,” remarked Dirk dryly as the man strode in.  
“My lady,” announced Rookfeather in a deep, guttural voice, “how may I serve you?”  
“See, Rookfeather, we have a new slave to the house,” Rose extended a long white arm, from which tumbled the sleeve of her dress, to point out the boy troll crouched by the fire, “will you show him to duties around the house, and make him presentable? I am sure he will be of help to you.”  
Rookfeather was taken aback, and showed it by raising one imperious white brow, “I, my lady? Am I so past my use that I must be assisted by a serving boy?”  
“No, old friend, best friend,” said Rose comfortingly, “of course not. But our house must be strong and seen to be strong. We must repopulate and grow in our numbers.”  
“And as to the expense of this growth?”  
Dirk interjected, “have no fear there, that one would have been a bargain at twice the price. But, my lady Rose liked him. So.”  
Rose looked up, a slight frown marred her fine features, “my Dirk, you are cruel.”  
“Aye. And sharp.”  
  
Rookfeather turned to the boy and nodded sharply, “very well. And what is this one's name?”  
“He hasn't spoken,” said lady Rose, “at all, and he wasn't named at the auction. See if you can get that out of him, too.”  
Rookfeather was clearly displeased but beckoned to the troll, who stood up and trotted over obediently, “as you say, my lady. Will there be anything else?”  
“Is there any word from the Council of Houses?”  
“None, my lady, and I have sent to the aviary regularly to see if any birds should arrive.”  
“What do you think?”  
“Think, my lady?”  
“Are we in danger?”  
“Yes,” said Rookfeather flatly, “of course, but that is life. I cannot say more at the current time  beyond what is either rumour or so well known as to need no saying. The Peonies gather as they have been doing, the Amaranths say nothing of their intentions to anyone. The Delphiniums and Lilacs are close, but staying out of things. The Foxgloves remain insidious, but not unfriendly. The Nettles will say nothing except that they are ready for what comes, the Trefoils want to be left alone. As for the Hyacinths, who can say what goes on in that house.”  
He had gone over the major houses  of the human quarter, and had nothing else to say.  
  
Lady Rose dismissed them sadly, and stared into the fire. Dirk worked his jaw impatiently and looked at her but had no words of comfort to give, but he stayed there with her there.  
  
So it was that Rookfeather guided the slave about the Rose House.  
“You will be responsible first of all for general cleaning and repair. There are plenty of tasks for you to be set to before we can put you to some kind of routine. And I must know where your skills lie.”  
Rookfeather stopped abruptly and turned.  
“I assume that you have some kind of skills to be made use of, boy?”  
The troll just nodded, bobbing his head nervously.  
“And I assume you have a name, too. I can hardly go on calling you boy all the time.”  
A shrug.  
“Well? Answer me. I might not be Master Dirk but I can muster as sharp a retort as he should you give me reason boy.”  
The troll opened his mouth slightly, and a hoarse whisper came out, but it was too shy and too short for the old man to hear. Rookfeather was close to taking him for a mute.  
  
The old man grunted and beckoned to the slave to follow. He made his way across the central wing of the house and up the single main stair that threaded up through the structure like a spine. On the third floor a narrow corridor wound into the Easterly wing, past the second drawing room and the old library. They passed through a solid oaken door, beyond which the walls gave way from dressed stone and panelled oak to bare plasterwork and the floors to simple red tile. Rookfeather took him into a high room that formed the interior of a minor turret that jutted awkwardly out of a corner of the building, another pointless human architectural flourish. The room was bare except for a few items of mouldering furniture, boxes and a table covered in dust cloths, and the ceiling was a spiral of wooden slats interspersed with bare slate tile that tapered up to a point high above.  
  
There was one window, a slatted narrow wooden box filled with warped cheap glass circles that were leaded into place haphazardly. It let in light enough, but the view was crazed and chaotic. Before the window, the sill formed a natural shelf and Rookfeather invited the boy to sit there, which he did with a look of wariness. He looked as though he were afraid that the old man was going to toss him straight through the thin round panes straight out and down onto the cobbles below. Instead Rookfeather pulled a wooden chair out of a corner, dusted it off with a cough and sat down nearby.  
“Look at me, boy.”  
The slave glanced at him fearfully.  
“When I first came into the Rose House, I think I might have been your age. Oh yes, hard to believe, to see me now. This was in the time of the current lady Rose's grandmother of course, and I served her as I have served the House ever since.”  
The slave nodded slowly.  
“This was long before...” Rookfeather faltered slightly, he was gazing to the window and lost in memory, “long before all the evils that befell this House reduced it to the state we see today. Mm, but that was another time. Listen, boy. When I came here I was frightened, as you must be. Everywhere I saw men with swords, and I heard tales of the wars between Houses, the blood in the streets and the bodies in the river. I was frightened, yes, like you are.”  
The slave shivered and slowly brought his hands up to hug himself about the shoulders.  
“Troubled days, yes even then, they were troubled days. But the Rose House is one of the better, I think. I was treated fairly, and in time I came to love it here, as I love my lady Rose and the line of this House. Even so, there were times that I was afraid, and I came here, to this room. I sat where you are sitting now and looked out, and I thought about the world and the House. One day I no longer needed this room, I doubt anyone has been in here for... oh, years.”  
The slave looked up at him slowly. His lips, darker then the grey skin of his hide but still remarkably pale, pressed together and then parted, and he swallowed fitfully.  
  
Rookfeather stood up with a grunt and clapped the boy lightly on the shoulder once, twice. Then he turned to leave, casually speaking as he went.  
“I think you might care to make use of this room. It's yours to have, we'll find you a cot to sleep on and some blankets, and whatnot. Ask Cook for a basin of water to wash in. I think we can afford to leave your work to the morning, the rest of the day is your own.”  
As Rookfeather reached the door and pulled it open he heard something from behind him, another hiss but this time there was a little voice to it for once.  
“Karkat,”  
“Mm?”  
The slave touched his fingers to his breast with the tender delicacy of a baby spider and said it again.  
“Karkat.”  
Rookfeather looked at him for a long moment, and the old man swallowed. He seemed to compose himself somewhat and nodded briskly.  
“Very well. In the morning, you will be put to work Karkat. I'll have someone call for you when it is time for dinner.”  
  
Rookfeather left, pulling the door to- but leaving it noticeably ajar, and unlocked. As he stepped carefully back along the corridor he marvelled at how small and tight it now seemed, and how expansive and vast his little lonely territory had been to his young eyes, years ago.  
“Yes,” he muttered to himself, pulling his robe tighter around his shoulders, “I was quite, quite frightened.”  
  
As the day wore on, the focus of activity in the House shifted inexorably towards the great kitchens which spread expansively to the back of the House and out into two separate scullery yards. There was an unspoken line of demarcation between the parts of the house where the lady Rose, her housemen and attendants and guards, lived and worked and the rest- the under-cellars and coal-holes and larders. These places were known collectively as the kitchens, and they were the absolute territory and demesne of Cook, who was known exclusively by that title alone. Cook was a man with thick brawny arms like a blacksmith, and wide shoulders that could hold a barrel of wine apiece. He was the absolute dictator of his little kingdom and the three servants who scurried about under him. They were unique in the House in that they were salaried workers, there on contract but theoretically free to leave at any time. In fact, Cook was known for his jealously guarded recipes and had been approached by other Houses on several occasions. For all that he might have been paid more if he took his skills elsewhere, in no other House could he pridefully state that every inch of the kitchen from pantry to refectory to salting-house was his own to rule.   
  
His staff was tiny but lived in mortal terror of his softly-voiced commands and iron rule. If the House were not understaffed then he would have struggled to provide meals for them all, as it was he was able to make do so long as he was well prepared each day, and free to run his kitchens in strict discipline. In the mornings great cauldrons of water were set to boil over logs and would do so the entire day, and a pig set to roasting would be ready by the evening for the main meal. Cook was even-tempered and gregarious, and rarely raised his voice- but it was that fact about him that made him feared, because when he chose to shout the unfortunate recipient of his ire knew that their end had come. There was only one thing that Cook would not abide and that was unexpected guests to spoil his careful preparations and so it was with not a little trepidation that Rookfeather walked into the broad main kitchen and rapped politely on the ancient beechwood table.  
  
“Rookfeather!” Cook looked up from a bowl of dough he was kneading into submission, “what brings you?”  
“Dire news I fear Cook,” said Rookfeather with a smile, “another mouth to feed.”  
  
Cook withdrew his hands from the dough and dusted them lightly with flour, slapping them together with a loud clap. His hair, jet-black and combed neatly back from his broad forehead, was already dusted with it. Cook straightened up and fixed Rookfeather with a look.  
“Another to dinner?”  
“Yes, and lunch too if you can manage.”  
“Today?”  
“Yes.”  
“And you tell me this now? At near enough eleven of the clock? No, I insist, impossible!”  
Rookfeather held up his hands, palms outward, and made a calming gesture. The two men had sparred playfully over the years and it was a matter of territory and respect. Cook would of course do exactly what Rookfeather wanted, so long as Rookfeather was clear that he didn't at all have to.  
“I apologise of course Cook, but m'lady Rose has acquired a slave that needs a little feeding up.”  
Cook grunted, folding his knotted muscular arms, “oh, aye? More help around here then?”  
“Perhaps, when he can be spared. But the boy is practically skin and bone, something must be done.”  
Cook nodded, “I can whip something up for the lad then, I suppose.”  
“Oh, and Cook? The boy is a troll.”  
“A troll!” Cook raised his voice slightly, and behind him a servant noticeably winced.  
“Yes, my lady's choice.”  
“I see. I haven't cooked troll food in some time you know, I make no promises! I'll not be held to standards for food that isn't even going to a human!”  
“As you say. It is a slave boy, not a noble gastronome looking for  feast. Just don't kill the boy, and the lady Rose will be happy as shall I.”  
“Very well, Rookfeather! I'll have a plate made up for luncheon in an hour. The slave may eat in the red scullery with the rest of the lads.”  
“You are a gentleman and a friend, Cook.”  
  
The red scullery was so named for the red tile on the floor there and the similarly painted plaster walls, even the oaken beams across the ceiling seemed ruddy. The room was used for the cleaning and maintenance of cutlery and crockery, and so a vat of hot water was always kept at one end. The steam from it kept the scullery in a constant warmth, maintained by a small brazier beneath the vat, and it was a comfortable retreat for the serving staff at their appointed lunch time. The servants clustered about the long table in between piles of plates, dishes and pans waiting to be cleaned or sparkling and neat. Mostly, the servants snatched a plate of food at lunch time and ate hurriedly before rushing off to their afternoon duties.  
  
The troll boy Karkat was nervous to be among them when he was sent down. The servants were efficient and did everything to a strict routine that was as regular as the workings of the massive grandfather clock in the long gallery. Karkat immediately felt like an outsider, an unwanted grain of dirt clogging the mechanism. He was still draped in his rough blanket and culottes, and the servants looked at him with undisguised curiosity, noting his tight leather collar with the bright brass ring first and foremost that marked him out as the lowest of the low.  
  
However, Cook stormed into the scullery, filling it with his booming voice and his massive presence easily. He clapped the servants on the back one at a time and introduced them.  
“Boldry, Carew and this hefty fellow is Gerod, and I'm Cook. Welcome to the House, boy. What's your name then?”  
“Karkat,” he whispered, but no sound in the kitchen escaped from Cook.  
“Karkat! Ha, there's a troll name if ever I heard one! Well, I don't have much in the way of troll food, but here-”  
  
Cook produced a wide platter loaded down with more food then Karkat had ever seen in one place in all his life. There was a dish of pickled sausage lightly fried in tomatoes, along with a saucer bearing tiny jellied fish and best of all there were slices of a thick pie made with grubs and ground salted beetle. The food was far too sour for the human palate and gave off a smell that was offensive to human senses, but to Karkat it was a bounty beyond belief. Cook made a point of keeping a well-stocked larder for the purposes of preparing any meal that should be required within his abilities, and that included meeting the needs of lady Rose's occasional troll guests.  
  
Karkat needed no urging, he dug in with a gusto that was shocking. The servants looked on in amazement as his tiny sharp teeth ground and mashed their way through mouthful after mouthful, and the boy demolished half the plate in record time. Cook looked proud enough to burst and beamed widely. Like every professional chef he valued the joy of food far more then dainty manners, and he took a visible pleasure in seeing the boy gulp down his offerings with such obvious and almost desperate relish.  
“See there boys, that's what I like to see! There's a lad who likes his grub!” Cook laughed, echoes booming around the scullery, and clapped a hand on the table, “eat up, enjoy your fill, there'll be more at evening meal. As for the rest of you, are you waiting for permission? Get your dinner eat, there's work to be done!”  
With that, Cook departed and the servants made to follow him. Gerod, the more heavy-set of the three, patted Karkat on the back abruptly, which made the slave flinch automatically.  
“Well done there, lad! You've made a friend for life in Cook, I reckon. Stay on his good side and he'll see yer well-set for dinners!” Gerod grinned and patted his own wide belly, “I should know! Eatin's good round here.”  
  
When they were gone and Karkat was left alone he finished his meal and looked down at the plate in shock. Never in his short and largely miserable life had he simply been handed food that he hadn't had to beg, steal or fight for.  Never had anyone particularly cared what his name was. Karkat swallowed heavily and realised that he was about to burst into tears, and that he would not be able to stop when he started. The simple pleasantries he had been offered were more then he had ever expected or been told to hope for in life. He raced out of the kitchen and ran all the way to the tower room he had been given. He slammed the door shut behind him and pressed his back against it, breathing heavily in harsh wracking sobs that made his narrow chest heave.  
  
The first day and night was spent in his room, and Karkat was largely left alone. He was provided with a narrow cot bed as he had been promised, and by morning he was composed enough to maintain his customary blank stare when Rookfeather came to him and told him that his duties would begin. Karkat was happy to trail behind Rookfeather obediently, and he had already resolved that the Rose House, though it owned his body and his service through coin, also had his undying loyalty through this tiny glimmer of simple understanding he had been shown. Though the times to come would present challenges and terrors unknown to him then, it was not the heat of battle or the encroaching fear of destruction that forged him. Karkat's unyielding and unending service to his mistress was bought for a plate of pickled fish and an old man asking his name.


	3. Chapter 3

White trails of rain sped down the windows like purest milk. All over the West-facing side of the House was a constant battle to keep the windows clear with cloths and buckets of water. Karkat was put to work immediately and thoroughly. The guards of the House tramped this way and that in their assigned rosters, and Karkat ran after them with wax and whetstone to sharpen blades and clean armour. The guards were generally salaried men who did not actually live in the House except for the corps of Housemen who were considered bonded to the Rose line and were effectively kinfolk.  
  
When he was not busy with the Housemen he was sent on endless errands for Rookfeather who always had something that needed doing. He would be carefully stitching backing onto a torn curtain one morning, hammering out dents in a copper pot by lunchtime and hauling coal from hither to yon by nightfall. There was no rhyme or reason to the work, only an endless churn of more to do and though Karkat was always exhausted by day's end, so too he always had his warm cot waiting for him and the promise of a meal from Cook to tide him over till morning. He could not say that he was happy, for the life of a slave is not a happy one and the threat of a thrashing was always over him if he performed badly, but yet he had never been more contented.  
  
The season turned, In time, and the third season began. Karkat learned his place in the Rose House and fell into something like a routine. The most pressing tasks that needed to be done were either completed or clearly beyond him. Although the house was dilapidated it was at least a little cleaner, a little more comfortable, a little better able to withstand the elements. Roofs with leaking tiles were explored and those tiles replaced, windows that admitted freezing draughts had wadded rags pressed with a butter-knife into the gaps to seal them up. The slave was kept busy as ever.  
  
Karkat wore a plain white tabard with the symbol of the Rose House picked out on the breast in red stitching, and he had a pale cream shirt with similar trews. Dirk had provided him with a pair of sturdy boots that needed filling with rags before they would fit his tiny feet well. Cook had given him an old scarf which was Karkat's proudest possession. He wound it carefully around his neck every day and through the brass ring of his collar, tucking the ends under his tabard, come rain or shine.  
  
As the odd-jobs about the house were brought under control Karkat was increasingly sent out into the gardens to work. The ground was starting to ice over in the mornings and he begged a pair of gloves, a houseman lent him an old pair and later told him to go ahead and keep them. The cold weather worked against the weeds and undesirable plants at least, making them a little easier to kill and uproot.  
  
As the third season moved into fullness and waxed cold and damp, the days took on a still blankness. The light was crisp and white, and everything outside looked as though it was frozen solid. There was barely any motion in the trees and the leaves, for there was no wind on most days. The slightest noise carried precisely a long distance and echoed off the high garden walls. As Karkat tramped through the crackling leaves and underbrush the only sound was the faint muted rumble of the city, and even that seemed quietened as few went abroad in the third season who didn't have to, especially in the heights of the human quarter. The third season was a time for the dersites, who withstood the cold with a stoicism. They had a way of ignoring extremes of temperature and seemed not to care when the seasons changed, and would go about their business without a care.  
  
Karkat was sent into the deeper part of the walled gardens to seek out the last of the year's wild mushrooms before they were all lost to the cold, and took the opportunity to wander freely. There was a wide esplanade forming the main part of the gardens dominated by a long lawn that stretched out from the Easterly wing of the house, and beyond that a low wall separating out a small pond. After the pond, a high bush screened the back gardens which twisted and wound around trees and flower beds in a less organised fashion, all the way back to the high garden wall. There had once been a distinct path through these gardens that provided a pleasing walk to the nobles of the house, but this too was in disrepair and the area was becoming more wild. Karkat hadn't explored all of the gardens and kept coming across little grottoes and follies screened off from each other with walls or cultivated bushes. There were places that had been clearly left alone for years, ancient hollows where lovers might have sat on stone benches and whispered oaths to each other in generations past.  
  
Karkat came across one long grove that was not like the others, it was close to the wall, which rose at the back in ivy-coated blankness. There was a long bed of earth and beyond that a squat stone building that looked to his troll eyes like a strange little house, or perhaps a temple of some sort. He saw several lines of stone markers on the ground and as he walked slowly down the line, he could recognise human script carved into the stones but it meant nothing to him. He had little experience in the rituals humans performed away from public, but he recognised that he had come across a place of solemn gravity. Karkat stayed there for a time, sat at a stone bench which seemed to have been left there for the purpose specifically of staring at the odd little markers. He was curious, and determined to ask about this later on.  
  
He came back to the house and passed by the kitchens to drop off his meagre haul of mushrooms with servant Boldry who nodded in acknowledgement, and went back to his duties immediately. He expected Karkat to wander off, but the slave stayed, lingering in the kitchen behind him, and eventually Boldry glanced over his shoulder.  
“Somethin' else you need boy?”  
“Can I ask you something?”  
“S'pose, but I'm a bit busy today.” Boldry had a habit of always assuming that his business was a temporary affair, as though tomorrow would turn out to be restful.  
“What's it mean where you have lines of little stone markers in the ground?”  
Boldry frowned and grunted, “what you chattin' about, mate?”  
“In the gardens, right at the back. A load of them, and there's a little stone house there too.”  
“Where?”  
“Right at the back, near the East wall there.”  
  
Boldry thought about it. He was cutting vegetables finely, but he paused and set down the knife as he realised what the little slave was talking about.  
“Oh, that's the family graveyard.”  
“What's that?”  
“It's where the dead go.”  
Karkat visibly paled, his grey skin blanching, and Boldry laughed.  
“Don't worry, they're no harm to you where they are!”  
“Are the dead really in the garden?”  
“Well, buried there, yes. What happens to trolls when they die?”  
  
Karkat gave this some thought and knitted his brows. The concept was one that he was of course aware of, in a vague sense, but he had never given much thought to anything beyond the concerns of the immediate. The concept of death was too large, too intense for his mind. He realised that he had no idea what happened to people after they died, either trolls or humans. In his life as a slave he had seen dead bodies, his fellows sometimes collapsed with exhaustion or exposure. They were simply taken away and that was that. He had never given any thought to what actually happened to them. It occurred to him that his knowledge of his own culture was not detailed. The humans had habits and rituals for everything- a time to eat, a time to sleep, a time to take tea. A season to sow and to reap, a song for every occasion. He knew this from observation of them from outside, but his knowledge was sketchy at best. He also knew that trolls had their own rituals and culture, but he was an outsider there too. As a slave, he had spent his entire life being told what to do, being punished or shoved into a cage, moved from place to place, bought and sold. Only now was he starting to realise just how little he really knew about the world.  
  
Boldry could tell that Karkat was consumed in very deep thoughts, and went back to his work with a chuckle. Thoughts of the great beyond were for other times, when there was not a dinner to prepare and vegetables to be chopped. Boldry was a man who liked to reduce the world to simple chunks, and be the one wielding the knife.  
“Boldry?”  
“What.”  
“There are dead humans buried in the grave yard?”  
“That's what I said.”  
“What about the little house?”  
“Oh, that's the Rose mausoleum. That's where the honoured dead are interred.”  
“What happens in there?”  
“Happens? Well, nothing I suppose. The bones sit and wait.”  
“For what?”  
“Who knows.”  
Karkat shook his head in bewilderment. The idea of knowing what would be happening from one week to the next in advance was new to him; the idea of knowing that one's bones would be in a particular place forever was bewildering.  
“Who decided to bury them?”  
“I dunno. It's just the way things are done.” Boldry sighed in exasperation, “look, if you really want to know this stuff then look in a book. Or ask Rookfeather, no one has been here longer then he, I'd say if Rookfeather can't answer your questions then there's none to be had.”  
  
Karkat took that advice to heart, and sought out Rookfeather at the first opportunity. In the evening when the business of the day was done Rookfeather would habitually spend time in the library or in his private study, reading unfathomable tomes by the light of lamp and candle or else adding to his copious amounts of correspondence that flowed in and out of the house every day. Karkat found him in the library on the third floor, at a desk surrounded by candelabra and mirrors. The mirrors were angled so as to throw extra light accurately over the book spread open before him, and the old man was reading furiously. Karkat came to him with a mug of hot tea with ginger and cinnamon which the old man enjoyed on cold nights, a suitable pretext to approach him. He set the cup down with a tap and Rookfeather looked up suddenly, he had been lost in a reverie and not even noticed the slave approaching him.  
“Oh, Karkat.”  
“Tea,”  
“Ah, good, yes. Of course,” Rookfeather took a sip and nodded. He was minded to go back to his reading but he saw out of the corner of his eye that Karkat was stood there awkwardly, shuffling in position.  
“Karkat?”  
“Could, uhm,” Karkat hesitated. He had largely found his voice when he needed to talk to people but he was still quiet, and he still found Rookfeather intimidating.  
“Well? Out with it.”  
“Could I ask a question?”  
  
This was new. Karkat only ever asked Rookfeather questions when he needed to know details of how to perform a task, generally. The old man was stern, but he had developed something of a fondness for the little slave and it brought something of a smile to his face to see Karkat shyly approach him like this.  
“Yes, you may ask.”  
“I was in the grave yard before.”  
Rookfeather's expression froze. He was still amiable enough, but his visage was unmoving, “go on.”  
“I've never seen one before. Does every house have a grave yard?”  
“I suppose they would do.”  
“Why do you bury the dead all together like that?”  
Rookfeather contemplated this, “perhaps they enjoy the company,” he realised that was a bad way of putting it and re-phrased his answer, “we wish to remember the dead, and so we give them a place of remembrance so that we can mark their passing.”  
“I see,” said Karkat slowly, mulling this over. He had been given the answers he sought, and yet it was not enough for him. Something in the back of his head urged him to go on. “Why are there so many of them?”  
  
That question seemed to be loaded with meaning. Rookfeather turned to him slowly and gazed into his yellow eyes. There was a depthless something beneath the icy surface of the man's expression.  
“What do you mean by that?”  
“There are so few around the house now, and so many in the graveyard.”  
“Ah,”  
“It seems strange, because-”  
“Be quiet!”  
  
Rookfeather had spoken sharply, more so then he meant to, and Karkat cringed back automatically, dropping to his knees in submission. Rookfeather sighed, he hadn't meant it to come out that way. He waved irritably at Karkat, shooing him away.  
“Leave me boy, I am busy.”  
“I'm sorry,” Karkat whispered, crouching over and backing away.  
“Karkat.”  
  
The slave halted but didn't answer. Rookfeather mulled something over in his mind, and turned slowly. The words seemed to come with difficulty to him, drawn up from a well of sorrow.  
“There was a great evil in this house. This was a long time ago, back in the time of the current lady Rose's mother. Those were dire times, that left the House wounded. That is why we living are so few, and our grave yard so full. I do not wish to discuss the matter further, and you are not to bother the lady Rose by spreading discord about the house with thoughtless questions. Do you hear me?”  
“I do,”  
“Hear and be told then. Go on now, go about your business. I did not mean to be quick-tempered,” it was the closet thing to an apology that a slave could ever expect to receive. Karkat bobbed his head and ducked away, scampering from the library gratefully.  
  
There was a pall over his mind as he went about his last duties of the day, wandering about extinguishing candles and clearing away what oddments of rubbish might remain here and there. Karkat had heard hints before in snatches of conversation, that there had been an event that had shaped the destiny of the Rose House. There was a terrible blackness in the past which seemed to reach out to ensnare the hearts of men even to the current day, it was a sadness that stole over the eyes of the old ones now and then, it was a wariness that froze the hearts of the young when the walked the ancient corridors and felt something wrong in the air when the boards creaked and the walls groaned. Once you knew of it you could no longer ignore it, and Karkat saw all around him a great black something that had settled over the Rose House. Not a physical presence, to be sure, but a real presence nonetheless. There was an evil in the past of the House, Rookfeather had said, and Karkat wondered if humans buried the dead to commemorate them, or to be rid of them.  
  



	4. Chapter 4

  
The third season swelled and waxed cold, growing and settling over the city like a chill blanket. The air was oppressive and close, the wind stung the lips and the eyes. The windows were all frosted until mid-morning, and then only relinquished their ice grudgingly. Gradually the House pulled in on itself, there were fewer excursions outside and supplies were brought in so that life could continue indoors as far as possible. Karkat spent most of his time darting up and down stone steps to one of the many storage cellars, usually hauling coal out of draught carriages drawn by snorting, massive horses. There was an arrangement of winches and dumbwaiters of a sort, to transport coal up to the higher floors where it was needed, but there was still no substitute for the hard manual labour of bringing the stuff inside.  
  
Karkat worked hard to keep up with Boldry and Gerod who were also hauling sacks of the stuff down the coal chute. Though he was far smaller then they, and still not fully recovered from his depredations, the slow weeks and months of food and rest had firmed him up somewhat. His arms no longer ached like burning when the day finished, and his body no longer screamed at him when he pulled himself upright in the morning to tread silently about the house lighting candles. Even when the bright, warm seasons came the house would still be dim and musty in its' interior, and candles were a constant all year round. While they worked the two servant lads chattered endlessly, huffing steaming clouds into the frigid air as they hefted up and set down sacks of coal. Karkat took the sacks and ran them down the coal chute, before dragging them into position against the wall. They would swap tasks regularly, and they worked their way through the job with speed. Karkat still didn't like to talk, and he mostly just listened while the others chatted.  
  
Although he still felt the same sense of security and satisfaction in the Rose House, something ineluctable had changed nonetheless. Ever since he had discovered that grave yard things were not the same, and new questions kept arising where previously he had just taken everything he saw for granted. For instance, there was an entire upper wing of the house that was apparently abandoned, and sealed off. The housemen in their patrols would wander about every corridor, always checking for the occasional broken window, the odd unlocked door, making sure that things were secure. Dirk would drill them mercilessly and explain at length and lurid detail exactly how he would get in, if he were an assassin. Hop up the old tack shed roof, up the tin pipe drain, knock in the small window of the East vestry, then a short run over the landing- silencing anyone on the great staircase with a quick thrust of a knife- and straight into the lady Rose's room for bloody work. The housemen would pale and cringe, but he got the message through to them. When the threat came it would get into the house through the slightest gap, and it was his job to cover those gaps with men.  
  
Yet, Dirk never went into that sealed wing, nor any of the housemen. As far as Karkat was aware no one did, and that made no sense. There was the constant paranoia, as well. No one ever berated Dirk for being over-cautious when he made his pronouncements, and the gates to the House were kept barred at all times, only being laboriously unlocked and opened up for known visitors. If it hadn't been the lady Rose herself who had bought him, Karkat felt that he would have had a far more difficult time fitting in. He couldn't shake that sense of doom which seemed to be waiting in every dark corner. It had been fought off perhaps, a long time ago, but the doom of the House was still very much alive and waiting. He was amazed that no one else seemed to see it, or perhaps they were so used to things being how they were that it was no more a concern to them. The men and women living their lives in and around the house were surrounded in mystery and they didn't see it or feel it, but it was weighing more and more on Karkat's mind.  
  
The loading of the cellars took up the mornings of three full days, after which there was enough fuel stored up for every boiler, brazier and fireplace in the house for the remainder of the year. When it was done Karkat shared a sense of accomplishment with the other lads, and they met in the red scullery for hot tea with a little honey provided by Cook. Karkat clinked his mug with the others and they huddled over their steaming brews, enjoying the warmth and the companionship. The other lads had accepted Karkat for what he was and didn't expect him to be talkative, they were content to let the slave go about his business as they went about theirs, and Karkat had grown to think of them fondly. He frowned into the dark reflection of his own face in the surface of his tea. That mystery had his friends in its' grip, too.  
  
Karkat dreamed fitfully that night, and blinked awake while the room was still black and still, with barely a sliver of moonlight to outline the walls. He half-remembered a dream, there had been shouting, and he was running, and someone said something to him about blood. It was important, they were shouting and he couldn't make out the words. He was blind, deafened, tumbling over and over in the snow and the dirt. Karkat had to pat his hands down firmly on the rough bedding of his cot and very deliberately remind himself where he was, who he was.  
  
He sat up and huddled in the freezing chill. He had been given blankets and bedding in warmer days, the room was becoming far too frigid but he didn't dare bring up the idea of more blankets. The thought of a coal brazier of his own never even entered his mind. Karkat stood up and moaned softly as his feet touched bare, cold wood planks. He had no particular desire to resume sleep and the dreams he had been having, and so he decided to leave his room and walk the house a little, until he felt calmer. The house was familiar to him by now in every detail of corridor and landing, and he had the free run of the place. On nights like this he sometimes liked to walk about, he liked to feel alone and surrounded by vast empty space. There were only the night-sounds, all as familiar to him as old friends. The ticking of the grandfather clock was one of the principle ones, and the wooden bones of the house creaked and moaned softly as they settled through the night. There were no commanding voices, no shouts for the slave to attend to his duties, only himself alone. The dark never really bothered him, he had heard that it was a peculiarity of trolls to be that way.  
  
Karkat padded softly over the carpeted hall at the base of the great stair, and looked into the Long Gallery. He glanced at the stern faces of lord and lady Roses, staring out of their painted prisons on the walls. The blue moonlight made them seem spectral and fearsome, and so he tried not to pay much attention to their gazes. In the night time their eyes were hollow and black, and followed him about as he walked. Karkat had wandered frequently like this, from the time when he realised that so long as he could convincingly state that he was on some errand or other that no one would bother him, but he had never felt as oppressed as he did on that night. He had to keep pausing and squeezing his eyes shut, keeping his breath under control with effort, before continuing. Everywhere he went he saw paintings, and black eye sockets set in blank white faces. Whenever he blinked a white eyeless face flickered out of his imagination and hovered violently before him. Whenever he turned a corner it seemed as though black eyes were the first thing that came to view. Karkat became afraid, frightened in a way he had not been before. It was not like the fear of being whipped again, or the fear that a drunken owner would cut him for fun again, or even like the fear that a curious human would treat his body as a vaguely interesting trinket to be explored- again. The fear clenching his chest tightly was in those Rose eyes, black eyes, and the night sounds that danced on the edges of his ears.  
  
Karkat was not alone, in the depths of the dark corridors far from his little room and his little cot. Karkat forced himself to turn and stagger to the stairs. He felt the presence all around him in the air and on his skin. It whispered over and over in his ear, like in his dream. Horror, pure and truthful horror, stabbed at him and wounded his senses. Eyes assaulted him from every angle, painted mouths that were calm and pleasant by day light were screaming and taut in the blue light of the moon. Skin delicately painted in tones of peach and sepia was flaming white and burning. The Roses were burning, and in their tortured nightmares they sated and stared into him- the slave who dared to rouse them up from their slumbers. Karkat whimpered and sobbed under his breath. He found himself begging miserably to be left alone. He cried openly and his knees were water. The stair to his floor was endless and expanding, and as Karkat raised his head he saw a shaft of moonlight spear down from a tiny round window to splash perfectly over a frosted white face high above him. Yet another of those paintings, hung at the very top of the stairs, and the Rose within it was looking down on him with a terrible expression of pain and shock. There was no doubt in his mind now as he stared, paralysed with horror. This was no trick of the light- the woman in the painting had no eyes at all. He could see the vivid, ragged edges of the sockets. Her lips were drawn back in an inhuman snarl to reveal rows of vicious teeth.  
  
“It's not real,” he said redundantly, falling to his knees sharply on the stairs, “I know it's not, because it isn't.”  
  
The painting moved, warping and rippling. The pastoral scene of trees and hills behind the woman swayed in an eldritch breeze and she reached one hand up in a mockery of a greeting. The woman was screaming and screaming, he could see her lungs labouring desperately for breath. There was no sound except the ticking of the grandfather clock, which made her screams all the more terrifying. Karkat began to moan as he shook his head. He could not look away, and now the woman was striking the surface of the painting from the other side, like someone trying to break their way through a window. He saw the surface of the painting lift and wrinkle, the surface was yielding like a soft blanket as she pushed against it. Now he began to hear the screams, at the very edge of his mind, and he knew with a dread certainty exactly what that meant. The woman at the top of the stairs had stopped moving, she was just grinning down at him now and nodding her head slowly. The screams were coming from behind him, because the others had already broken free. They were coming for him from the Long Gallery, from the entrance hall, from the Green room and from the West Library, they had torn through the strips of fabric and paper holding their images and they were running for him. He heard the footsteps as clearly as anything, and the hall echoed with their cries. Karkat looked up and the woman in the painting was very close now, she was pressing herself forwards, she wanted to see him with her black empty eyes, she wanted him to fall into the sockets and know how they felt against his skin.  
  
Karkat collapsed into a foetal position and screamed until his throat, weak from years of silence, was hoarse and felt ragged in his neck. He was painfully aware with an icy clarity that it would make no difference if he were in his little room and his little bed now, they were everywhere.  
  
Light blazed acridly, crazed shadows were tossed up and down the walls as a lantern swung in a firm grip and winked in between the banister rails that flickered in front of it like a flickering eye. Heavy footsteps pounded on the stairs hard enough to bounce Karkat's head and he looked up to see Dirk stood over him, standing like an alabaster colossus with one bare foot either side of him. Dirk had the lantern in one hand and his killing knife in the other, and was whipping his head back and forth to scan the area for any enemy.  
“Boy!” He roared, “who's there? What is it?”  
Karkat looked up with a moan of pure suffering and reached out a trembling little hand to wrap weakly around Dirk's ankle. The human was dressed only in a pair of cotton sleeping-trousers, but he'd had the wherewithal to shrug his mail shirt on over his bare chest before coming. Karkat could see clearly it was draped uncomfortably, the shirt was intended to be worn over a padded jacquard or the like and seemed oversized over Dirk's bare shoulders. He hadn't even taken the time to button the leather strap at the back of the neck to bind the shirt closed.  
  
Dirk saw quickly that there was no attack in progress, and he lowered his knife with a low grunt.  
“Slave, you had better not have been sat here screaming over a nothing,”  
“I saw,” hissed Karkat softly, “the Roses- their eyes! Eyes! Oh, oh! They were screaming!”  
“Mother mercy's tits!” Dirk swore, “a nightmare? That's all? If you've a-woke m'lady Rose, I'll give you something to scream about, slave!”  
“I swear it! I saw, I swear!”  
  
Next to arrive were three housemen, reporting to Dirk after scouting around the entrances to the house, and Rookfeather who had been roused from his slumbers rudely and work an expression that showed it. The man still had on his black cloaks over a rust-red robe and, remarkably, arrived carrying a sword. Despite his age he held it steadily and looked about ready to use it on someone. Rookfeather conferred with Dirk in a low whisper, confirming that the lady Rose was safe and well.  He had told her to stay in her room until he personally came to fetch her, and to keep the heavy oak door bolted fast until then. Dirk nodded in satisfaction.  
“Well there's no more to it then that,” Dirk growled, “but at least we have the house secure. It does the men good to have a little fright now and then to keep them wary.”  
  
They were interrupted by a blood-curdling cry, this time Karkat was not involved in producing it. The men stared at each other for a moment, then clattered down the stairs. Karkat squeaked as he was instantly forgotten and bowled over, but came to his senses quickly and ran after them unwilling to be alone. The noise had come from the direction of the kitchens, it was the sound of despair and raw terror.  
  
It was Cook. He was slumped in a corner in his sleeping-gown, another lantern was left forgotten beside him. The kitchen staff had their own rooms near the kitchens, and Cook raised a weary, trembling hand to the black maw that was the open door of the pantry. Dirk had the lantern and went first. He stepped smartly into the pantry and there was silence for a moment, broken only by a small, very human sound like a sigh from the pantry. Dirk walked out again, he looked weary.  
“Gather the housemen,” he said, “it's Gerod. He's dead.” Dirk looked down for a moment, sucking on his lips, “someone took his eyes.”


	5. Chapter 5

  
Only when the entire household gathered in the grave yard did they seem numerous. The funeral of Gerod was carried out the next midmorning, and the little yard was full of people. Between the house staff, Cook and his remaining attendants Boldry and Carew, Rookfeather, Dirk and his housemen, and the lady Rose with her attendants there were perhaps thirty people gathered. In times past, this would have represented the barest few of the core householders, but it was now everyone. Karkat stood at the periphery, slowly moving from one foot to the other stamp the frost out of his boots. A chaplain had been summoned with his coroner to attend the final rites and see to the burial.   
  
Karkat had assisted in the preparation of the body. As a slave he was the only one who had no say in the matter; the housemen had all taken to a superstitious dread, and Cook was inconsolable and withdrawn. Boldry and Carew had flatly refused to approach the body at all. Gerod had been laid out on the oaken kitchen table, which had been covered with two layers of old dust sheeting. As far as they could tell, he had been in search of a midnight snack when he had met his fate. Cook kept repeating to himself in a low mumble that the lad had always liked his food, always. In the end, Dirk had taken Cook to one side for some sharp words about maintaining discipline among the younger members of the House, who might take to all sorts of strange thinking if they were not set a good example.  
  
The housemen had been through every room, every passage, checked every window and door. It was a surprise to no-one that they found the house to be entirely secure with no entrances undisturbed on the night of the killing. Whatever had got poor Gerod, there was no one who expected, in their heart, to find out that a human agency was responsible.  
  
His body had lain like so much meat, and Karkat had bound him up with cotton sheeting to make a burial shroud under the instruction of the coroner. The chaplain had consecrated a strip of white cloth, holding it to his forehead and muttering in soft prayer, before rolling it up and pressing it firmly in the mouth of the corpse. At Karkat's curious look he explained that it was to ensure that a wandering dead man's soul was barred from returning to the body. That the body had no eyes was an especially ill-omen. The chaplain laid more strips of consecrated material over the blank staring sockets and knotted them behind the head to make a blindfold. Finally, a long length of cloth was laid down in a line from the forehead to the ankles. The chaplain shook a handful of roughly crushed salt over the body, and then they pulled the cloth shroud that the body laid on up and over it to enclose the corpse fully. The chaplain wound red thread through the edges of the shroud, binding them together with a series of knots and a prayer with each one. The body then went into a pinewood box lined with burlap and sprinkled with a little more salt. The coroner laid the lid onto it and lightly nailed it closed, before making his mark on the box and filling in the details of the burial in his record book. Karkat stared at the box while the coroner worked, scratching at the pages of his book with a quill pen in neat, quick marks. Gerod had been his friend, entirely as much as any living creature had ever befriended him. They had shared a joke or two, and once Karkat had sat with him for an entire hour peeling potatoes, and they had talked. Karkat had never had such a long conversation before that day, and it stuck vividly in his mind.  
  
Now there was only a blank, anonymous box. Meaningless except for the coroner's mark on the surface. It could have been a box of potatoes, or bolts of cloth. If Karkat had not been there to see it filled, he would not have thought twice about the box, would have ignored it entirely. He didn't know why, but that thought burned at him especially acutely and Karkat struggled with tears. The chaplain was sympathetic to him, but he didn't have any answers. Or, he had only human answers, and they were alien and unsatisfying to Karkat. He had no idea if his own culture would provide more comfort, and the vagueness left him feeling empty and sorrowful.  
  
The funeral was conducted briskly. The correct words were said in their places, and the box was lowered into the frozen hard ground. Two housemen had laboured for hours just to dig a grave barely sufficient for the purpose. They had no marker stone yet, and a simple wooden stave had to suffice until one could be procured. Suddenly, it was over, and life was expected to go on without Gerod, as though nothing had happened.  
  
Dirk tersely explained to Karkat afterwards that he was not to be punished; in fact if he hadn't raised the alarm with his cries there was no telling whether any more people would have died. It was not an apology by any means, if anything Dirk was even more brusque then usual. He told Karkat to stay in his room at night from then on, and the little troll just nodded gravely. There was a pall over the house after the death. Karkat had no doubt that as soon as the sun went down, the members of the household would find their way to locked rooms and comforting beds as soon as possible.  
  
In the weeks following Gerod's passing Cook made clear that he needed more help about the kitchens. Karkat was available for whoever needed him of course, but he was no chef and could barely manage to wash dishes properly to Cook's satisfaction. He announced to Rookfeather that if he was to maintain the living standards of the house he simply needed more staff, and that was all there was to it. Rookfeather promised to see what he could do.  
  
Lady Rose herself was withdrawn, more so then she had been in past months. Whatever business kept her occupied through the day, it was certainly nothing that a slave troll would be expected to partake in. For this reason Karkat was surprised on the chill morning that he was informed she wanted him to begin attending her personally.  
“What does that mean?” Karkat asked softly.  
“The lady Rose,” began Rookfeather with a slightly disapproving tone, “wills it that you will attend her in a personal capacity. You will attend to her general needs above and before all of your normal duties. This means that you will concern yourself with her wishes to the exclusion of everything else.”  
“She hasn't even spoken to me since I was bought,” said Karkat flatly.  
“That is irrelevant. She speaks, you serve. Remember that you are hers, Karkat.”  
“I remember,” he said quietly. Unconsciously his finger found the brass ring of his collar and fiddled with it irritably.  
“You will begin as soon as you are ready. It's for me to prepare you, it seems.”  
“Prepare me?”  
  
Karkat began training under Rookfeather. He soon realised that his role would be changing considerably. He had to learn how to enter a room correctly, and leave it. He had to learn the stately, measured pace to walk at when he was called, and how to stand attentively with his head bowed. Rookfeather took him into the library for lessons and would talk constantly, drilling into Karkat all kinds of etiquette and lists of faux pas to avoid. He had a long, thin rod that he liked to swish about to illustrate his points, and he was not above giving Karkat a stinging whip across the thighs if he thought the troll was flagging. Soon, Karkat was learning how to present himself in refined company. He could address ladies and gentlemen respectfully, he could offer them tea and serve it properly. It was all the same to him, just more ritual to learn. To his mind one task was much the same as another, he was only a slave.  
  
Karkat lifted a silver platter bearing a tureen, it was filled only with water for the practice. He bowed and placed it before Rookfeather on the library table, eliciting a firm nod from the man. Karkat looked down, and he saw a box lowered into the frosty ground. He practised turning down sheets and preparing pillows, drawing cloths across the library desk over and over until he had a practised flick of the wrist to it. He saw strips of white, consecrated cloth laid reverently over an eyeless corpse. He bowed and offered condiments in the prescribed manner and order to fit with the correct service of food and refreshment. When he laid a sugar bowl at Rookfeather's right hand all he could think about was handfuls of salt tossed into the pinewood box.  
  
Rookfeather was as good as his word- he would not allow Karkat to proceed to his new duties until his etiquette was perfect. They drilled with military precision day after day, and if the lady Rose grew impatient, it was only to Rookfeather that she expressed it and he assured her that the boy was coming along well. The library was the whole of Karkat's day, and he was grateful for that at least. He didn't think he could handle the kitchens, and he definitely couldn't go into the red scullery again; perhaps ever. They took simple meals together there, Rookfeather was unwilling to bring a halt to the training for any longer then necessary and the old man had a stamina that impressed the far younger troll. On one evening when the duties of the day were finished Karkat dabbed at his grey lips daintily with a table-cloth and looked at Rookfeather, bringing his courage together to ask a question.  
  
“Master?”  
“Yes boy?”  
“I don't mean to speak out of turn,”  
Rookfeather nodded gravely, the slave was following the correct forms of address, he signalled Karkat to go on with a wave.  
“Master, on the night that-” Karkat swallowed heavily, “that Gerod died,”  
“Ah-h-h, yes.”  
Karkat was assaulted with visions of eyeless eyes coming for him. It was hard to continue, he knew they wanted him.  
“Master, I remember on that night, you had a sword.”  
“Hm?”  
“When you came to the stair to meet Dirk, you had a sword I recall.”  
“Ah! Oh yes, of course.”  
“I wasn't aware that you owned one.”  
  
Rookfeather smiled, it was the first time that Karkat had seen him really smile so fully. It crinkled his face in ancient paths as the skin bunched and flexed. Karkat realised absently that Rookfeather's face was scored with old smile-lines as well as the creases of a severe frown, but those lines were older and less-seen.  
“I was young too, once, you know. I was a sword-arm for the Rose House, at times.”  
“Really?” Karkat's wide-eyes betrayed his naïve curiosity.  
“Indeed. Oh, but this was long ago. And back then it was needed, everyone carried a blade at all times.”  
“Why is that, Master?”  
“You're a tricky one, aren't you boy?”  
“Master?”  
“This is your round-about way of asking about the bad times, hmm? The questions I have explicitly told you not to ask?”  
Karkat looked down, “please, do not punish me Master.” That was cruel of him. He knew that the old man was fond of him, and though it was perhaps normal for a slave to wish his owners not to punish him, he had said it in a way that he knew would needle the man.  
“Ahh-h-h-h Karkat, I was perhaps a little too severe,” the tactic was cruel, but efficient, “I suppose you have been here long enough to know a little more about it.”  
  
Rookfeather paused and glanced about. They were alone, utterly, but still he made a point of looking into all of the corners of the room one at a time. He held those shadowed places with a fixed gaze, one at a time. Whatever he was looking for, Karkat did not ask.  
“This was back, oh, twenty years perhaps. The current lady Rose was not even yet born.”  
Karkat nodded slowly. He was hanging on every word with avid curiosity. Once the old man started, it seemed that he could barely contain himself. There was a lot to be said that he had been holding in for a long time.  
  
“I was younger then, of course. I was not yet the house steward, but I served under the steward of the time. A man called Gentry as it happens. Oh boy, you should have seen the House! Numerous, and vigorous. We had holdings throughout the city. The Rose House was seen as a leading voice in the council, and when a man walked about with the Rose sigil on his breast he knew that he would have a certain dignity and respect about the city.  
“Back then, the house was filled with people all of the time. It felt so... alive, to me. No matter the time of day or night, there would be lamps lit and housemen running about on errands, slaves going here and there, all sorts of people coming and going. I'd say that there was always a petitioner at the gates requesting some kind of business with the Rose House.  
“We were feared, too! Ah yes, feared. I'd say we had a force of sixty- no- ninety housemen! Ninety men-at-arms, with flashing blades and such shining mail, you would have been stirred to your heart to see them. Proud boys, good boys. We had entire streets owe fealty to the house, whole minor houses called themselves vassals to the Rose.  
“The lady Rose was... what can I say about her? She was beautiful, and fearful. She was like a slender white beam of light that walked into the room and captured the hearts of everyone there, and then went about her way with that harvest. She spoke only seldomly, but her every word could shake the city. When she cast a favour on a young man, it was known that he was someone to watch in society. She could break a reputation quite as easily too, mind you. She was beautiful, but cruel. Ah, she could be cruel boy!”  
  
Rookfeather paused, and looked seriously at Karkat. The slave was hanging on his every word with wide, bright eyes and clearly absorbed. Despite all rules of propriety Karkat nodded and urged him to go on, which Rookfeather did with difficulty.  
“Boy,” he said, falteringly, “do you ever dream?”  
Karkat was taken aback by that, and sat up straight to give it some thought. “I suppose I do. I have had bad dreams... recently. Yes.”  
“Humans dream too, I did not know if trolls had such fancies. When humans dream we go back, to the things that have gone before. And sometimes- very rarely- we go back further. Some humans reach back in their dreams to the furthest past from which we all spring forth.”  
Karkat nodded slowly. He knew there was something dangerous here, but he didn't know why.  
“Master?”  
“This was the mother of the lady Rose. She was a grand woman, a powerful woman, and she could have conquered the world if she had turned her mind to it, I am certain. But... she had bad dreams.”  
“I don't understand, Master.”  
“Nor do I, nor does anyone. But I tell you this, young slave. She dreamed things which humans are forbidden to contemplate. Her dreams spoke to her and came to her in the day and the night. In the end, her dreams were the ruin of this House.”  
“I don't understand, Master.”  
Rookfeather shifted uncomfortably, “that you are to be the attendant of the lady Rose means that you will learn this sooner or later. Make no mistake boy, what I tell you now is not to be repeated, only learned and remembered. Am I clear?”  
“As crystal, Master.”  
  
Rookfeather closed his eyes and concentrated. What came next was extraordinarily hard for him, and it showed.  
“The previous lady Rose learned things in her dreams. They spoke to her and told her what to do. She heard voices that said, go here... do this... do that... and she did. And in time, I think, the voices and the lady Rose became one thing, between them. She would make decisions which seemed strange, and yet always came right in the strangest ways. It was as if she knew what was coming in the future before it happened.  
“And that did not escape the notice of the other great houses. The questions began to be asked- how is it that the Rose House seems always to know what is to come? Whence this prescience? Murmurings and rumours were heard in the streets. People began to wonder if the success of the Rose House was assisted by some... something.”  
  
Rookfeather trailed off. He was staring into the corners of the room again.  
“Boy, listen to me when I say this. Your House is more then just a home you live in, and certainly more then the coin in your pocket, the mark on your breast or the collar on your throat, boy. It's more! Your House is... it's who you are. You see? When they started to talk, of course we fought back. We challenged those who spoke out, there were duels.  
“Bloody, violent duels. Sometimes ten men or more would face each other in a line, all for a point of honour. Blood in the streets. I saw it boy! Blood, falling like rain. Blood in the gutters and the drains, blood on the bricks. It splashed around like water. Aye, we all carried a blade in those days. Blood in the streets, bodies in the river. I remember a few myself, that I took down to the river in a  dray-cart and hauled off into the water. Be done with the quick, the corpses of the dead. We only gave our own a decent burial.”  
  
Rookfeather's hands were shaking. Karkat had never seen him so emotional, indeed had never thought it was even possible. But now that Rookfeather had begun, there was no stopping him. He was saying more now, surely, then he intended to but the ache in him had been building for twenty years and when the dam broke it broke fully.  
“We killed, and killed, and it was never enough. The more we killed the worse it was, but I always stood up proudly and said 'I am of the Rose,' I never doubted my House. I was younger then, but not so young that I should have had that excuse.  
“The name of the Rose House was darkened. In time, when new housemen came to the house they were not the proud boys they had been, but knifemen and killers born, drawn by the promise of coin and blood and little else.  
“Killers! And we let them loose! The housemen of the Rose always seemed to be where they were needed. The rumour-mongers were always rooted out, the wagging tongues were silenced. There was nowhere to hide from them. It was a horror of duels and blood, and in time the great houses realised the threat. They knew that individually, they faced destruction one at a time.  
“I suppose a conclave was called, a council without the Rose House's presence being invited. Of course, the lady Rose was ready. She sent her men. She saw it as the worst slight that they would so publicly conspire against her, and she wanted to make a challenge out of it and carve a few more of her detractors.  
“But they were ready. The meeting had already taken place, in secret, by doves and letters I believe. They never met in person to decide on it. When the housemen of the Rose arrived at the meeting-place to demand satisfaction, they were met not with the dignitaries and nobles of those Houses, but by fighters of all the great Houses. The duel was accepted of course, and before they knew what was upon them, our housemen were surrounded and massively outnumbered and of course there was nowhere to go. It was a massacre.  
“That was the turning-point. The Rose House was investigated by the church and the council. They found nothing, but it made no difference- our reputation and our power was shattered, and the other Houses were out for vengeance. Those were the bad days, when it was not safe to be abroad without  a blade at any time. Even now, after some twenty years, we are still diminished. The other Houses look to us with suspicion, and at the first sign of... they will leap on us if they think it is a return to the old days.”  
  
Karkat suddenly flashed back in his mind to that first day when the lady Rose, in secret and with her most trusted bodyguard, went out to the market. They were accosted by men who said that the lady Rose 'had to answer' to them, and Dirk had killed them for it. Suddenly, the scene took on a new and darker cast. The lady Rose could not walk abroad openly on the streets of the city because of what happened twenty years ago, and then he saw Gerod's eyeless murdered face.  
  
Karkat learned something else, too. He was starting to realise that he couldn't take things on face value, and that in fact there was a lot more meaning in what people chose not to say then what they decided to speak aloud. He was starting to think in new and different ways, and for the first time he was starting to really think for himself. It was no longer enough for him to be told that a slave's lot is a simple one, and that he should be happy to do as he was told and no more.  
  
“What happened to her, Master?”  
“Mmm?”  
“The old lady Rose. What became of her?”  
“That is not for me to say boy,” Rookfeather became uncomfortably aware of how much he had said already. Karkat's eyes sparkled as new connections and suppositions formed in his mind.  
“The sealed wing,” he said softly.  
“What?”  
“The sealed wing, where Dirk does not go,” said Karkat slowly, “you know what's in it, don't you?”  
“Careful boy,” said Rookfeather in a low voice, “you speak out of turn.”  
“When you came down to the stair on that night, you said you'd told lady Rose to say in her room and bolt it tight, did you check on that sealed wing too?”  
“Boy!”  
“Which lady Rose had you been speaking to?”  
  
Rookfeather practically leapt across the table and slapped Karkat across the face, his thin fingers stung brightly and Karkat lifted his hand to his cheek in shock. He wanted to bow down, press his forehead to the floor and beg, but he knew that as much as Rookfeather could order him horsewhipped the blow had hurt the old man, too.  
“Karkat listen to me,” said Rookfeather in a hiss, “you are speaking of matters that are of the Rose House. These matters are ours alone, and not to be discussed. Not in public, not in private, things must be left to lie.”  
“I'm sorry, Master,”  
“Let it lie, Karkat! Just let it lie!”  
“I understand, Master.”  
  
They parted for the evening, Karkat's training was almost complete. As he went back to his room Karkat couldn't help but think about the sealed wing. Rookfeather had talked about the previous lady Rose, but at no point had he mentioned the circumstances under which the current lady Rose came to inherit her title.  
  



	6. ~ART INTERLUDE~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've had a very clear idea of the look of the characters in this fic, so I thought it would be fun to take a little time to do some piccies. I think I've come reasonably close to what I'm looking for here so hope you like them.

 

Karkat, Dirk and Rookfeather. If people are enjoying this I'll do more later on.


	7. Chapter 7

The third season was full-throated and bellowing snow across the entire city when the day came that Karkat was to enter the personal service of the lady Rose. His room was icy in the cold seasons, and his toes were numb nubs of stone on the ends of his feet as he got out of bed in the morning. He had trouble walking until they warmed up, and had taken to swaddling his feet in cloth before he slept each night. The human arrangement for sleeping, on a cot covered in blankets, was still strange to him after all this time and he wasn't sleeping well as the nights drew in colder. He didn't dare to think about the other things that were drawing close just outside his door every night. Karkat knew that if ever he plucked up the courage to step across the floor at midnight and press his ear to the door he would hear nothing, and that if ever he were to peek through the keyhole there would be nothing but a sleeping house to see, and yet no force in the world would have compelled him to leave his bed when the night time came.  
  
Karkat woke early that morning. The shifting of the sun across the sky over the year meant that a shaft of brilliant white light lay across him when he woke in that season. He tugged his sheets away- the only way to endure the cold was to embrace it whole-heartedly and get used to it fast- and glanced down at himself. He was looking better by fat then he had in living memory. He was no longer on the verge of starvation, his ribs no longer struck at his skin alarmingly. His hips were not sharp angles for his clothes to hang on. He stroked a hand over the tightly bound collar nestled at his neck and found the brass ring at the front. That hadn't changed, but that never changed. He had never spent as much time with the lady Rose as he had done on the first day that she had purchased him. Since that time it seemed as though he had gone forgotten, left to fall into the routines and strangeness of the Rose House. The House had become his entire world, and in the time he had spend there the lady Rose had become a distant feature on the periphery of his understanding like a flag waving gaily atop a turret, meaningful perhaps but distant and not part of his personal existence.  
  
Now that was changing, she had called for him. The lady Rose was aware of him still, and that bothered him. He didn't like the idea that in all of this time she had maintained an awareness of him, he had been quite content with the idea that he had been bought and then immediately forgotten about. That was safety. Karkat sighed and went about his morning ablutions. The rest of the House would awaken in good time and he was used to being the first one to be up and about. He didn't mind being abroad in the house after dawn, when it seemed the visions that had plagued him retreated back from whence they came. Karkat yawned into his fist as he made his way in a simple white cotton shirt and trews toward the large outbuilding with running water fed from pipes beneath the house. The outhouse was technically attached to the stables and under the purview of the stable-master, but it also served as a wash house for the staff. The more senior members of the house tended to have their own private chambers for such purposes, the remainder shared the outhouse. Karkat padded down the great stair and through a narrow corridor past the kitchens, out of a side-door and across a shiveringly cold stone quad through another oaken door into the outhouse itself. There was a long trough along one wall where horses could be watered, along with stalls that had water taps in each where the staff could wash. In busier days, the outhouse had been a constant bustle of activity as men and horses alike were cleaned up, watered and made ready for duty.  
  
Karkat shrugged out of his shirt and hung it over the lip of a stall that ran to shoulder height, turning on a thin stream of water and rubbing his chest over with a salty cake of soap. Later in the day as the great boilers would fire the water would become warmer, but there was no time for him to wash when the day had begun. Sometimes he would be able to sneak in at the end of the evening and there would still be piping hot water for a surreptitious shower, and those evenings were heaven. Karkat muttered and grumbled under his breath;  he had taken to this habit recently and when others weren't around he would revel in complaining bitterly on a variety of subjects. It had begun without him noticing, but now it seemed second nature to him that he would provide himself a running commentary of the perceived woes of the world as he went about his work. It amused him both because it was enjoyable to get out some of those feelings that years of oppression had rammed down into his gut and because he knew on an objective level that he was happier and healthier in the Rose House then he had ever been before.  
  
Karkat was trying to massage some of the soap into his mess of hair when he heard something and stopped dead. He span the tap closed and wiped the water from his eyes, looking around frantically. If anyone had heard him, things would not go well for him. Towelling his face with his shirt he backed out of the stall warily, and the noise came again. Karkat stared in shock when his eyes lit on the far corner of the outhouse, where the stalls had blocked his view. There was a man there, sat up in the corner, and he was bleeding. Karkat was snapped out of his shock by a groan from the figure and he ran over, his throat clamping shut with fear as he recognised a mop of ash-blonde hair.  
  
Karkat ran over to Dirk and knelt, pressing hands on his chest and propping the large human up. He had blood on his face, on his mouth and nose, and it had stained his white tabard. Dirk looked up blearily at Karkat and said something incomprehensible. Lacking any better ideas Karkat mopped at his face ineffectually with his wet shirt and Dirk winced and turned his face away weakly.  
“What happened?” Karkat hissed, adding “sir” as an afterthought.  
“Help me up,” Dirk sounded hoarse and dry-throated, and when Karkat looped an arm under his shoulder and heaved he moved sluggishly.  
  
Karkat slipped on the cool stone floor and struggled to help the human to rise. Dirk insisted on staggering to a stall and Karkat helped him, turning on a stream of cold water with a twist of the tap. Dirk moved like a drunkard, scooping up water in his gloved palm sluggishly and splashing his face. As he wet some of the blood away Karkat saw that he was bleeding from a cut at the level of his scalp, and it looked as though he had been hit in the mouth as well. More seriously, he had a stab-wound in his chest, that had scored across his side under his armpit.. It was severe enough to have bloomed a stain of blood across the Rose insignia on his tabard. His mail shirt jangled as he shifted, and blood dripped out of the links.  
“You should take off your armour,” said Karkat, “let me see. Sir.”  
Dirk nodded mutely and tried to struggle out of his tabard but it was no good, he couldn't manage. In the end he produced a dagger and cut at the material, and with Karkat's help ripped it away. His mail was another matter, Karkat had to un-knot the leather thong binding it closed at the back, and then the shirt fell away from his neck and Karkat eased it up and off him. The padded undershirt split down the front, held shut with large toggle clasps. For Dirk to have bled through all of these layers so noticeably, the wound had to be severe.  
  
“What happened?” Karkat asked softly.  
“A scratch,” Dirk replied, before ducking his head under the water. It splashed carelessly down the roughly chopped hairs at the nape of his neck and beaded on his white skin. Karkat glanced down at his own grey hands; the human was pale even compared to his usual milky complexion.  
“More then a scratch, I think. I should get Rookfeather.”  
“In a moment, in a moment. I just need, I have, let me catch my breath,” Dirk was rambling again.  
  
Karkat stared at the grate set into the tiled floor of the stall. A swirl of water was circling, and in were skeins of vivid human blood. Dirk was bleeding still, and the blood was so vividly red against the white tiles that Karkat stared, hypnotised. It was a colour that seemed to call out to him, and repulse him at once.  
“Why do,” he started haltingly, “do all humans have blood like that?”  
Dirk moaned and planted his hands palm-out against the wall to support his weight, “of course, of course, all blood in the end. We all bleed.”  
“It's all the same,”  
“All blood,” Dirk agreed, “I've seen enough of it. Too much of it, and it's all the same on the inside, when the knife goes in.”  
“I see.”  
“Tonight I got cut. Unlucky. The other man was less lucky though,” Dirk smiled grimly, “I cut him worse.”  
Karkat mopped his shirt under the water and carefully washed at Dirk's wounds with it, eliciting a shiver from the man. The cold water was good, it helped him focus and helped numb the pain, but it wasn't pleasant. He had a long thin cut along his side, it bled but didn't appear to be immediately lethal. It looked as though a thin blade had found a way through the mail shirt- unlucky indeed.  
“Why were you fighting?”  
Dirk winced as Karkat washed the blood from his side and bit back a whimper of pain.  
“Why we all fight,” he muttered, “for the House. For lady Rose.”  
Karkat frowned and bit down on his lip, but he couldn't help from pressing on.  
“Is it like it was before? In the time of the last lady Rose?”  
Dirk grunted, if he had anything to say about Karkat's knowledge of history he kept it to himself.  
“Before my time, dunno.”  
“What is going to happen?”  
Dirk grinned wryly, “we don't all know the future.”  
  
Karkat felt that he was being left out of some joke. Dirk straightened up painfully and Karkat automatically grasped his arm to steady him. Dirk was bare from the waist up now except for his thick gloves and leather vambraces holding his knives, and Karkat's narrow fingers dug into his skin.  
“Karkat,” whispered Dirk. It was the first time he had addressed him as anything but 'boy' or 'slave' and Karkat started in surprise.  
“Yes?” He stammered.  
“If you go out, outside the house, carry a blade.”  
“I don't know how to fight, I'm,” Karkat gritted his teeth, “I'm just a slave.”  
“You'll learn fast if you get in in a fight,” said Dirk slowly, nodding. “I'll show you how, later. When I've had a few hours sleep.”  
“You need more then that! You're still bleeding,” Karkat was staunching the wound with his ruined shirt now, “I'm taking you to Rookfeather.”  
Dirk groaned at the thought, “that dried-up old sot, I don't need a lecture from him.”  
“Who ever does?”  
Karkat grimaced, it didn't do to speak ill of his betters and he knew it, but Dirk just laughed weakly and patted him on the back. Together the two of them, still soaking wet and stained in blood, made their way back into the house.  
  
The old man was certainly in a lecturing mood when he got a look at Dirk. In short order Rookfeather had him laid up in bed and called for various items from his own room, along with water and washcloths. Rookfeather cleaned out, stitched and bound up Dirk's side and gave him something for the pain. The cut on his scalp was less serious but bled profusely, and Dirk ended up with a wide headband of bandaging. Rookfeather turned out to be a skilled physician, not to any particular surprise on the part of Karkat who had long since assumed that the old man knew everything. By the time Rookfeather was satisfied Dirk was drowsy and barely able even to complain about being treated like a child.  
  
Karkat stole up beside Rookfeather and held up a bowl of water for the man to wash off his hands.  
“Will Dirk be...?”  
“Young Dirk here will be fit and well, if a little stiff for a few weeks. The wounds are not serious but will sap his strength 'till he is healed,” Rookfeather replied stiffly.  
“I see, that's good.”  
“Indeed it is, and lucky for him that you found him when you did.”  
Rookfeather paused. Dirk was staring at him with half-lidded eyes, he was not entirely present in his weakened state but he was still watching. Rookfeather put an arm around Karkat and guided him away gently, leaning over to murmur to him.  
“Did Dirk say what happened?”  
“He was in a fight, I think he won.”  
“Who was he fighting with? Why?”  
“I don't know, he didn't say. Oh, he said something about how we all fight for lady Rose.”  
“Is that all? Anything else?”  
“That's all Master,”  
Rookfeather had his arm around Karkat's shoulders, and held him tightly for a moment, “nothing else? Are you sure, boy?”  
“Yes Master!”  
Rookfeather sighed and released his hold, nodding wearily.  
“That's enough,” he said vaguely, “you are late enough as it is, I have sent word to lady Rose about what happened, she awaits you still.”  
Karkat nodded, “I will go now,”  
“Boy!”  
Karkat skidded to a halt. “Master?”  
“Look at yourself.”  
  
Karkat was a mess. His trews were bloodied and wet, he had a towel around his shoulders and he was certain his hair was once again all over his head. He was in no state to be presented to the lady of the Rose House, even as diminished as its' status may be. At that, there was a croak from the direction of the bed and they saw Dirk, his arm raised and beckoning weakly to them.  
“My shirt,” he said, waving weakly toward a box chest in the corner of the room.  
Karkat went and opened the box. Within was a collection of clothing, mostly in brightly coloured silks of various garish hues mostly rust-orange and red.  
“Take one,” sighed Dirk, “now,”  
“I couldn't, Master!”  
“Boy,” Dirk paused and gathered his breath, “before I regret and recant. Take a shirt, take a pair of breeches too. Eh, keep 'em. The lady Rose deserves, ah,” he trailed off and looked up at Rookfeather, his strength finally ebbing away.  
  
Rookfeather nodded in quiet understanding and went to the chest, picking out a slashed-sleeve doublet in quilted silk that fairly gleamed in the light. The doublet was in vivid orange with sunset-red piping, and though Karkat was considerably smaller then Dirk it buttoned up and fit him well enough. Rookfeather helped him pick a pair of breeks and sent him into the adjoining room to change, and when he returned clad in red-and-orange from neck to ankle Rookfeather nodded appreciatively.  
“It is well, it will suit you.” He glanced back at the bed with a half smile, and made to shoo Karkat out of the room, “go, I will see to him. It seems that Dirk likes you.”  
“Does he like anyone?”  
“He is a harsh man, and he speaks more then he should at times, but never doubt his loyalty to this house nor his love of the Rose,” Karkat had never heard her referred to in that way, “and nor should you doubt the meaning of this gesture. It is a good thing he does for you.”  
“I understand, Master.”  
“No you do not, perhaps one day you will. Go on boy, be about your business. Your Mistress awaits.”  
“I go now, good-bye, Master.”  
“Good-bye.”  
  
Karkat hurried through the house, up the great stair to the chambers of his Mistress. He casually ran a hand along the quilted lines of the doublet spreading horizontally down his chest. There was a design picked out across the breast in the red silk piping, it was not the insignia of the Rose as Dirk normally wore but another design, one that he couldn't quite trace with fingertips alone but appeared to be circular. He reached the door which he knew led to the antechamber of the lady's quarters, it was a place so far above and beyond his station in life that he had never before conceived of the idea that he might go in. Even more so then the house proper, over this threshold he was within the absolute demesne of the lady Rose and subject to her every whim and will. He took a moment to catch his breath and whisper softly to himself, going over the routines that Rookfeather had drilled into him. Raising a slightly trembling fist he knocked delicately on the surface of the door.  
  
“Enter.”  
  



	8. Chapter 8

Karkat stood in a respectful pose of polite submission, as he had been taught. His hands were cupped in front of him and his face was downcast. The harsh, brutal breaking of him as a child had put him on his knees a thousand times or more before various of his betters, but Rookfeather had taught him to stand in a position of polite, respectful repose. His doublet glowed in the subdued mid-morning light spilling from the high windows of the lady Rose's quarters. The room itself was actually an antechamber, her bedroom as such was a complex of smaller rooms that she held dominion over. The lady of the Rose House could conduce all imaginable business, from letter writing to reading to entertaining guests, without ever leaving her quarter of the house if she chose. Traditionally, the heirarch of the Rose House tended to be withdrawn and private, and the quarters reflected this ancient expectation.  
  
Karkat had closed the door behind him on entering the antechamber of the lady, and he was content to wait there on her pleasure for so long as it took. The lady Rose herself was sat at a desk that benefited from a window view that gave her light in the morning for her correspondences. At the moment she was writing one of her letters, she was surrounded with papers, books, manuscripts and ink. Her pen was a wand of ash with a silver nib, that she dipped regularly in a well-used pot of ink. The pot itself was, incongruously, a carved wooden affair that looked rough and had-made, entirely not in keeping with the finery of her rooms. Karkat fixed his eyes on it for a moment, before looking down again. To him, it seemed to call out for attention like a burning torch, it was a discordant note in the symphony of taste and delicacy that the lady Rose surrounded herself with.  
  
“Boy,” she said quietly, not turning from her writing.  
“Yes'm,” he responded smartly.  
“Come a little closer to me if you please.”  
“Yes'm.”  
  
Karkat stepped across the room and waited a pace away from her back, and slightly to her right. The light cast over her writing-desk was a little sharp, and glared off the whiteness of her pages. She dabbed the pen neatly in that strange little inkwell, and Karkat saw that the lip of it was encrusted with deposits of ink. It was old, and unwashed. The lady signed her name across the bottom of the page in a flowing hand and set down her pen on a carved ebony holder. She used a blotter to dry the ink and delicately folded the letter into a neat envelope, which she sealed with a stick of white wax that she held for a moment in a candle flame before dabbing it on the lip of the envelope. She reached into a little box across the desk that was decorated in mother-of-pearl and silver filigree, retrieving a signet that she pressed into the wax to leave the House seal.  
  
“You're a quiet one,”  
“Yes'm,”  
I expect Rookfeather taught you to keep your mouth shut and your eyes down.”  
“Yes'm,”  
“Do you think I bought you for your silence, boy?”  
“I wouldn't like to say, mum.”  
  
The lady Rose put the envelope in a small silken back and tied the drawstring closed, the bag contained other correspondences to be sent out into the city. Karkat watched her hands, they were delicate and fine. He noticed the tiniest spot of ink on her fingertip, alongside a grey smudge where she had perhaps washed away an earlier inky mark.  
  
  
“I have some questions for you boy. They might seem a little odd at first, but that is not something to concern yourself with. I want you to answer me fully and truthfully.”  
“Yes'm,”  
“And, I want you to answer even if you think I will be angry, or that you might be punished. Am I clear to you in my meaning boy?”  
Karkat took a breath, “you are, mum.”  
“I hear that Dirk has had an injury.”  
  
The lady Rose turned at last, beckoning to Karkat and inviting him to stand by her side where she could see him better. Karkat stood loosely at attention, mentally resisting the impulse to kneel. That would have been appropriate to a slave boy as he had been in the streets, but he was to take his cues only from his lady now. As Rookfeather had taught him, there was a time and place for such obvious shows of submission and it was crass to merely assume she wanted him on the ground at her feet. She would let him know if she did.  
  
“Yes'm, but Rookfeather says that he will recover.”  
“I hope he has not been too pained.”  
“No mum. He is happy to serve.”  
  
Karkat's blood ran to ice up and down his neck as the lady Rose turned a sudden, sharp and piercing gaze on him. He ran back in his mind over what he had said, looking for the motion of disrespect he must have made. His lady was displeased, and he felt as though his knees had been knocked out from under him.  
  
“You assume he was hurt in my service?”  
“I- mum- I don't-” Karkat rammed his chin down against his chest, staring at his feet.  
“Did he tell you that?”  
“N-no mum, not in so many words, I just felt...” Karkat trailed off.  
  
The lady Rose reached up, her hand was mysterious and alien, and when she touched Karkat's cheek it was like feeling raindrops on his face after a drought.  
“Boy. What happened to Dirk was terrible, of course it was. But whatever troubles Dirk has are his own. He was not hurt whilst serving this House.”  
“Yes'm,”  
“Do you understand, boy?”  
“Yes'm.”  
  
In a flash, Karkat thought back to when he had been frantically explaining what he had seen to Rookfeather. When he had repeated Dirk's words, when he had said “we all fight for lady Rose,” the old man had grabbed at him frantically and demanded to know if Dirk had said more. Karkat now realised that what he had taken for the delirious ramblings of a wounded man, as indeed they probably had been, were far more then idle words to the right ear. Or the wrong ear. The lady watched him closely and stared directly into his eyes, making Karkat feel small and uncomfortable.  
  
“Boy. What is your name, again?”  
“Karkat, if it please mum.”  
“Karkat. Tell me, do you like this house?”  
“Yes'm,”  
“Does anything here bother you?”  
“Bother me, mum?”  
“I heard about your little incident... on the night that the poor kitchen lad died.”  
“Gerod, mum.”  
“Indeed. That night.”  
“It was nothing mum. Just jumping at shadows.” Karkat closed his eyes a moment, “and ghosts.”  
  
That, at least, seemed to please the lady Rose a little. She actually smiled at him.  
“Ghosts.”  
“Yes'm.”  
“Very well. Is that what you believe happens when we die? We become ghosts?”  
“Mum?”  
“I believe my question was plain.”  
“Um. Perhaps for humans, mum.”  
“And trolls?”  
“I wouldn't know, mum.”  
“I see. Do you believe in such a thing as predestination?”  
“I don't know that word, mum.”  
“Do you believe that there is an order to things. Is the future laid out clearly before us?”  
  
Karkat pondered this question deeply. He was acutely aware that the lady was dancing around a subject that was only slowly coming into focus. She was a lot more intelligent and insightful then he had realised she would be. To him, labouring in the depths of the house, the lady Rose had been something akin to the figurehead of a ship- beautiful, remote and still as carved wood. It was discomfiting to know that the mind behind the symbol was so active and so intent on him.  
  
“I wouldn't know, mum.”  
“Then speculate.”  
It was a direct order. Karkat had never been ordered to think in his life.  
“P-perhaps mum, it stands to reason,”  
“Then, can we know the future?”  
“If we knew,” Karkat frowned, pausing, “if we know what happened, we know what is now. If we knew the present well enough, we'd know what was to come, mum.”  
The lady Rose seemed inordinately pleased, beaming happily.  
“You are far more clever then you realise, Karkat.”  
“Yes'm.”  
“You are a little like me, I think. We look at things, and see the truth in them that others do not.”  
“Mum?”  
“Yes. I have been watching you, Karkat. It is not by accident that I came to find you. I knew where you would be.”  
  
Karkat had no way to answer that. His eyes darted from side to side nervously. The lady Rose reclined luxuriantly in her chair, running her eyes over him almost fondly.  
“Tell me boy. My Karkat. What do you think of when you look at me with those clever eyes of yours?”  
“I think you are my lady, mum,” he answered smoothly. That one was easy.  
“You are being dishonest. I want your thoughts, not what you have been drilled into. Answer me, boy.”  
  
Karkat grimaced. It was a question that, he sensed, had no right answer. He brought his breathing under control. Without realising it, he had been panting nervously through his nose. He glanced about, looking for any way out, but there was none and the lady was patiently waiting for his answer. He had nothing to tell her, how could he? He didn't know anything about her, really. It was an unfair, a meaningless, question to ask of a slave. Karkat felt a sudden rise of anger unbidden and unwelcome in his chest, at the conundrum he found himself caught within. The lady Rose wanted an appraisal of herself from the point of view of her own slave, someone she could have whipped, punished, even killed without a second thought. And what could he say, when she had admonished him against simply reeling off a comforting platitude? There was no answer that it would be respectful to give. Therefore, Karkat resolved to simply say whatever came first to mind and be done with it, there was nothing she could do to him that he had not endured before anyway and he did not feel that she would kill him.  
  
“I think,” he glanced about, pausing and licking his dry lips, “that you have a fine taste in ink-wells, mum.”  
  
It had been all he could think about, that one jarring item that didn't belong. The only thing he had yet seen about the lady Rose that didn't speak to her status and wealth. She just stared at him with an expression between shock and doubt.  
  
“Go away,” she said softly.  
“Mum?”  
“Go! Leave me alone!”  
“I- should I-” Karkat stammered, not knowing what he had done and already bowing into a half-crouch before her but what he saw in her was not wrath but a depthless something- a feeling that burrowed into the core of her.  
“Go! Slave. I am- I apologise, I was- I do not require you today Karkat. Please come back to-morrow,” she swallowed thickly and Karkat heard the crackle of tears going down her throat, “I will need you then. To-morrow!”  
“Yes mum!” He practically shouted it, and darted away from her, crouching and half-grovelling as he went backwards to the door and let himself out.  
  
Karkat always had something to do. That was the benefit of being one in his position, there was never a moment without something to occupy him, and so never a moment when he needed to stop and think if he didn't want to. He undressed from the finery that Dirk had lent him- he still refused to think of those clothes as his- and after putting the brightly coloured finery away carefully on his single shelf and attiring himself in his accustomed clothes, busied himself.  
  
Karkat was moving along the halls and corridors trimming the candle-wicks with a blade, to ensure that the thick tallow candles didn't sputter and produce black smoke, when Rookfeather caught up to him with an ear-splitting shout.  
  
“Boy!”  
Karkat cringed. “Master!”  
“Come here, boy!”  
Karkat did.  
“What did you say to the lady Rose, boy?”  
“I- I said – I answered her questions, Master!”  
“And nothing more?”  
“I so swear!”  
“You did nothing to aggrieve her?”  
“I so swear, Master!”  
  
Rookfeather reached down and cupped Karkat's chin in one gnarled palm, tilting the slave's face up and from side to side. Karkat has always felt that Rookfeather could divine the slightest iniquity with but a look and the man certainly behaved as if it were so.  
“Would you lie to me, boy?”  
“Never Master!”  
“I know it. I wanted to hear it.”  
Rookfeather absently patted him on the shoulder and sighed. A little of the tension left Karkat and he sagged. The lady Rose was a lady of secrets and he was barely an initiate in any of them. He wondered at how many of the lines that scored Rookfeather's face were down to those secrets.  
“Enough boy, enough,” Rookfeather shrugged, “it is what it is.”  
“Yes Master,” replied Karkat, not understanding.  
“As you will not be serving the lady today-”  
“She said to-morrow, Master.”  
“Yes! Boy! Do not interrupt me. You will not serve her today, nonetheless. I have another task for you.”  
“Yes, Master.”  
“There is some correspondence that must be delivered. I need you to leave the house and take a packet into the town.”  
“Master?” Karkat was wide-eyed. He hadn't left the grounds of the house since he had arrived, and he had not borne any particular hope that he ever would.  
“I realise this is sudden. However, we are short of men now.”  
  
Gerod was dead. Dirk was wounded. The kitchens were too busy to spare anyone and the housemen were on the highest alert with their leader incapacitated. Karkat realised these things without having any knowledge of how he came to those conclusions.  
  
“Yes, Master.”  
“All I want you to do is visit the town, you will take a package into the place you are told to, and deposit it there. No more then that.”  
Rookfeather looked highly uncomfortable.  
“I understand, Master.”  
“This is... unusual, boy. Normally we would not entrust a task outside of the house to an unaccompanied... well.”  
“I understand, Master.”  
“I wonder if you do. The lady Rose herself has requested that you perform this task in her name, otherwise I would have forbidden it. Or at least sent men with you.”  
Rookfeather heaved a sigh, and shrugged weary, old shoulders.  
“Master?”  
“Perhaps it is for the best. A lone troll will attract no untoward attention. But still. Carry this.”  
  
Rookfeather drew from his robes a small dagger, sheathed to a narrow belt, and handed it to Karkat who took it, shocked. In his duties he had use of blades, of course, but it was a different thing entirely to handle a weapon. That was generally forbidden to a slave.  
  
“I'm scared,” he whispered.  
“I know boy. But it is her will. You are being shown a great deal of trust.”  
Rookfeather clapped his hands to Karkat's shoulders, holding him a moment.  
“Whatever you said to my lady, it left her a little out of sorts. But she obviously trusts you.”  
“I... see.”  
“Boy.”  
“Master?”  
“I trust you, as well. Be worthy of that trust.”  
“I will, Master.”  
To the lady he would have said it out of duty and out of rote, to Rookfeather he said it out of love.  
  
Karkat stepped out of the house, and out of the House, alone and armed with a dagger belted about his waist. Carrying a silken packet, itself wrapped in plain brown waxpaper, under one arm. There were no guards now, no whip-holders or Masters. No lady. He was stood on his own two feet in the high human quarter of the city and for the first time that he could remember it was entirely up to him how he should proceed. The feeling was one of awesome and terrifying responsibility as the heavy gates closed behind him. That he, a slave, would be so entrusted was inconceivable and yet he found himself in this incredible position. He had no idea the significance of his meeting with the lady Rose, but something had changed deeply and ineffably in his life since that morning.  
  
As he took his first few stumbling steps along the wide paved avenue leading down and through the human quarter Karkat boggled at the sighs, the sounds and smells as if for the first time. For the first time he was seeing all of these things as a person in his own right, free to a limited extent, permitted to choose where he should wander and what route to choose. He had been given explicit instructions by Rookfeather that he had committed to heart but there was considerable leeway as to how he would carry out his orders. Karkat found that his heart was racing. He remembered when he had been bought and taken up here the first time, when men had attacked and Dirk had driven them off. There was danger, to be sure, but he found very quickly that a lone troll- and a slave to boot- attracted no notice at all. It was simply assumed, correctly, that he must be on some errand for his Master. He might have been invisible except for the occasional glance that his horns and grey skin drew, the occasional chubby pointed finger of a fat human child remarking on the odd grey boy.  
  
The way led down into the centre of the city where people of all quarters mingled. Karkat dodged around the intent lines of dersites scuttling about on strange errands of their own, and pushed his way discreetly through crowds of wandering humans, seemingly aimless in their ability to randomly stop to talk or to stare or conduct business. He was starting to characterise humans that way, they were always in a state of either doing nothing or doing everything. He quite liked that about them. He had seen few trolls yet, however. Karkat had no idea how he would relate to any even if he did see them, but he put that thought and its' disturbing implications from his mind. There would be enough of that to come when he arrived.  
  
The lower marketplace, where he had been bought and sold like so much meat, stretched out below him but he avoided taking the Serpentine Stair; he could reach his destination without going there and so he chose not to despite the added time and effort required. Karkat knew the rough direction of his target and he found the question of navigating the city irrelevant; he simply kept his eyes pointed the right way and moved, circling around buildings or taking short-cuts down alleyways as he needed. In an awkward way, he moved directly forwards through the thronging city.  
  
Karkat found himself walking down a long, slender road fenced on either side by tall tenement blocks of cheap clapboard housing. The gutters ran foul with effluent, the walls were slicked and stained. Here, there was no running water and illness was an oppressive presence in the air. On either side he saw human females, either lounging about or gathered in small groups. They called out to him and giggled as he passed, making lewd suggestions and teasing comments. Some of them lifted their skirts or raised up bare white arms lewdly to him, they seemed to find it hilarious to see a troll boy in their territory. Karkat hurried along the street of whores and just mutely pointed to his collar when he was called, hoping that was enough for them to get the message. He had vague knowledge of how humans conducted their intimate affairs and he had no wish to know more.  
  
Karkat moved briskly on, and in time he left those quarters of the city most frequented by humans. The architecture began to take on an altogether different cast. Whereas humans tended to build out of seemingly anything that came to hand, raising up their constructions rapidly out of a baffling variety of materials the dersites limited themselves to their squat, blocky constructions coated in bare plaster to give their quarters the look of geometrical outcroppings of salt. The dersites tended not to speak with outsiders, nor to pay Karkat any mind in passing. Their religion dictated much of their daily activities, and they had no time for non-adherents.  
  
Karkat passed on into the troll quarter in time. The trolls build uniformly in marble and sandstone, broken occasionally by steel members stretching across and supporting their multitudinous hive-like structures. They built to last, with an eye on the long term plan at all times. The streets were straight and met each other at jarring, jagged angles. None of the turnings were a perfect right-angle which made the streets deceptively maze-like and easy to get lost in. The uniformity of style made Karkat's eyes ache in a way that even the humble but teasingly playful architecture of the dersites did not. There was nothing playful in the troll quarter. The rising columns of their buildings were picked out here and there with carved stone niches containing sculpted faces staring out endlessly from the stone. The motif of faces continued in lintels and archways, making every building a staring, accusing audience to those passing below.  
  
Karkat moved ever downwards, and the river flowed with him. He passed along beside a wide, deep canal that cut directly through the city to allow the river to flow through and out, one of the many canals that covered the quarter like a net. The river was dull and greenish, casting winding fingers of reflections constantly up the high walls on either side. Karkat walked down a slim stone pathway beside the river, under a bridge and into a deepening channel where on either side the walls became blank and perfectly smooth, and high. The trolls called the channels each by a different name, treating each canal as a separate entity, until the wide delta where the channels all coalesced to let the river flow sluggishly out as the Standeasy.  
  
There had been few trolls about on the streets. At this time they tended to be asleep, at night these streets would be full. Karkat felt a little relieved at that; here he could not rely on his invisibility. He had no way, in fact, of knowing how the troll quarter would receive him. However, he had been sent on this task for a mission. Lady Rose had apparently felt he was the best one to carry out her wishes, and it made a kind of sense. If anyone were to wander into the troll quarter, better it should be another troll even if he were a slave to humans and therefore a pariah to their society.  
  
Karkat heard a faint splash behind him but ignored it. It came again, but so soft as to be lost in the general murmur of the canal. Only when he saw a shadow pass by him shown in the reflected light from the water cast up the wall did he turn and see that he was not alone.  
  
There was a troll there, the first he had seen. It was rising from the water easily as a man might ascend steps, moving through the liquid with careless grace. Water gleamed and ran off slick grey skin, oily and perfectly smooth. The male had hair that fell in tousled waves back from a high forehead, with similarly swept-back horns that described a sinuous shape themselves. As he pulled free of the water, shooting upward and stepping lightly onto the wayside, Karkat saw that he was naked except for a purplish cloth wrapped tightly about his loins. He threw his head back and puffed out his cheeks, and a little water sputtered from the back of his neck out of behind wide frond-like gillflaps that fringed his jaw on either side.  
  
As the water-dweller approached Karkat backed away instinctively to the wall, reaching for the dagger at his side. Though the stranger was not armed he seemed entirely unafraid of anything the little slave might do. When he finally spoke, the troll had a strange, sibilant accept that almost sounded lispy to Karkat's ear.  
“What will you do with that?” The troll gestured to Karkat's knife, “kill me?”  
“I don't know! Maybe!”  
Karkat answered back in trollish, though he knew that his words sounded rough and excessively loud, he had spent too long talking to humans.  
“I don't think so, little fellow. I am a prince, you know.”  
“I don't know.” Karkat growled, “I don't know anything.”  
“They say you have to be wise to admit to that.” The troll sighed and ran his tongue over his teeth, thoughtfully.  
“What do you want,” said Karkat flatly.  
“How do you know I want anything?”  
“Why else does a prince talk to a slave?”  
  
The troll laughed at that and smirked.  
“Very true, very true. I like you!”  
“All right.”  
“I am prince Eridan you know.”  
“I'll bear it in mind.”  
“Now listen, I have something to talk to you about.”  
  
Eridan smiled, and placed a wet arm cordially about Karkat's shoulders, drawing him in. Close to, he smelled of water, and plants. He was soaking Karkat's clothing carelessly.  
“What is it,” Karkat asked warily.  
“You are that one who the lady, the Rose-human, owns, yes?”  
“How do you know that?”  
“So you are!”  
“What if I am? How do you know?”  
“The Rose House is known to us all, here. We like to keep a little eye on things that go on in the human side.”  
Karkat remembered that to the trolls the city as not divided into quarters but 'sides.'  
“So what?”  
“So-o-o the Rose House acquired a troll slave, and we watched and waited, and now when the lady is sending out her little messages here and there, she sends her little troll to our side. I wonder if you have a little package for me?”  
“Not for you, I don't!”  
Karkat had been told nothing about a water-troll. He knew where he was taking the package to, and this one had nothing to do with it. Karkat started to feel sick as he felt Eridan's hand squeeze his shoulder, just a little more then would have been friendly.  
“I think it is for me now, boy. Why not make things easy here? I mean that we can be friends. You would do well to be friends with a prince. You would find things a lot easier and enjoy the rewards life can offer you if you're open to new opportunities. Give it to me.”  
“Take it if you want it,” hissed Karkat softly, gripping his fist around the hilt of his dagger and pulling the blade free an inch, “but I'm a Rose, and you'll not have it without taking me first.”  
  
Eridan still had him held close, close enough that Karkat could feel his breath waft across his cheek and could hear the soft sussuration of his gill-flaps working in the air.  
“Don't throw your life away so cheaply boy, take th' chance what's offered to you an' be grateful.”  
As Eridan got angry, his voice started to skip a little and slur.  
“I could tear open your belly from here, fish,” Karkat breathed, hoping that he sounded more brave then he felt, “how princely are you on the inside?”  
“That's how it is then, is it? I don't mind a little killin' in my morning swim, boy.”  
Karkat worked his lips mutely and tried to swallow, his fingers had turned to water and he was very aware that he was about to die. With his task unfulfilled, and his lady waiting futilely for his return. And Rookfeather would never know that he had always kept to his promise.  
  
That thought was interrupted by a new voice, that cut across them both.  
“Tha boy said no.”  
Eridan looked up with a snarl and Karkat craned to see. They had been joined by a nightmarish figure, who might as well have stepped out of a convenient shadow so quiet had he been. Another troll, certainly, but his face was concealed behind a thick cake of greasy white make-up that was cracked and dry. His hair was everywhere, and his body was wrapped in coiling bands of black leather that were buckled tight here and there, with a long line of bright copper buttons running down his chest. The figure pranced and capered on the spot, and offered a mocking little bow. It looked almost clownish, except for the sinister cast of its' eye and the hooked, clawed fingers that were coated in a black ichor. Karkat felt Eridan release his grip and the water-troll backed away slowly.  
“I'm a prince! You can't interfere!”  
“I'm a prince!” The mad, prancing man danced on the spot and slapped his hands on the walls in time, “a prince, a prince, a prince!”  
“This is none a' his business!” Eridan protested.  
“Oh-h-h, but he disagrees, prince! He thinks it's all of bein' his business! The boy was delivering him a letter and he wants it!”  
  
Karkat paled, and pulled free of Eridan's grip. He had been told that someone would come to him for the package, and he would know them by how they presented themselves. They would know the answer to a question he had been given.  
“What's to do?” Karkat asked slowly.  
“Laugh! Laugh, laugh!” The other answered shrilly. That had been the correct answer to the coded phrase, this was who had come for the package. It was not in the least what Karkat had expected.  
“Enough!” Eridan snarled, baring his teeth and balling his fists, “time to die!”  
“Is it?” The clownish man threw back his head and let out a long, piercing howl. Eridan and Karkat both looked around wildly as he was answered by similar howls, and they both saw at once. Black figures rising up on the walls above them, howling and capering, watching greedily. Eridan realised at once that he was undone.  
“Time to die?” The man in black asked, “time to die, to die, to-day? A-loo-ra-lay!”  
The trolls up on the walls howled and cackled, answering him back in mad echoes, “a-loo-ra-lay!”  
Eridan quailed and fled, diving into the waters and soon he was nothing more then a stream of retreating bubbles.  
  
Karkat looked up at the tall figure looming over him, and held out the package.  
“This is yours, from the lady Rose.”  
“Uh-uh,” answered the man, “I'm only here to see it gets to where it is going.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“You have a little further to go, little man. Come, I'll take you to him, to whom you must go.”  
“Can't,” Karkat swallowed, “can't you just take it there?”  
“Brave heart, boy! Happy heart! There's no turnin' back, and nothin' to do but laugh, laugh, laugh!”  
“I-”  
“Come,” the man held out a hand, and there was no denying him, “come with me and I'll take you. To lord Gamsie.”  
  



	9. Chapter 9

Karkat found himself being led along the twisting ways and secret paths through the troll quarter of the city, that were known to the black parliament of the fools. He was following a fool now, he knew. Lord Gamsie and his fools in their black parliament were known and dreaded throughout the city, as much for their capricious and unpredictable nature as for their great viciousness and wrath. The fool in black capered a little, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walked. Though he was silent, the tall troll was tense and twitched constantly. He looked to Karkat as though he wanted nothing more then to be dancing and cartwheeling merrily, and was holding his natural inclinations back through the exercise of will. The black fool slapped a hand onto a plaster panel of a wall, his grimy hand left a print in a place where similar prints were just about visible as faded marks on the plaster. At the sound, someone up above poked their head out of a window and, seeing who it was, dropped a thick rope-ladder with solid wooden crossbars. The fool bowed mockingly, and indicated with one hooked finger that Karkat was to climb. For his part, Karkat was reluctant.  
  
“Listen,” he said, “here's your package, that's all I was told to do, is give it to you. I shouldn't even be here, I need to go.”  
“Shh,” said the fool, “climb, now.”  
“I don't want to go up there,” he was openly nervous now, “I don't,”  
“Parliament's in session boy, would you keep lord Gamsie a-waiting?”  
“Would he really mind if I sent my excuses and left?”  
“I think he'd mind.”  
  
Karkat swallowed and looked up at the rope ladder extending into a forbidding dark hole in the side of the building, when the fool ended the discussion abruptly.  
“Hup you go boy, I'm either climbing up after you, or climbing up an' dragging ye along by your hair.”  
Karkat squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the ladder. He reflected that his day of freedom, such as it was, had only opened his eyes to the pitfalls of that happy state.  
  
Karkat found himself crawling through a window into a dark room, and unseen hands reached out to help him and to guide him, he sensed a change in the air as he went out of that space and into another, and he was stumbling along a series of corridors and stairs before his eyes were able to adjust fully to the dark. He reminded himself constantly of the night that he had been abroad in the Rose House and the things he had seen, when the ancestors of that place had seemed to leave their paintings and come for him. He focussed on the dreadful fear he had felt clasp his heart, only because it made the current situation more bearable by comparison. He told himself that he had survived that awful night, and in comparison there was nothing left that could frighten him. He heard voices, he felt bodies pass by him in the dark, whispers flitted past his ear and he cause snatches of conversation happening somewhere off in the dark. There was also laughter- either near of far, there was always someone laughing somewhere. Any time that Karkat hesitated he invariably felt a hand press against his back, not unkindly but firmly.  
  
Karkat would never know exactly where it was he was led to, certainly he was in a very different place than the innocent-seeming building he had entered by ladder. He had passed below street level, and possibly below the level even of the complex of pipeworks and underground tributaries that lay under the city like a net. The air was warm and humid, and the walls were rough-hewn from the bedrock itself. He was led to a wide chamber with walls that were tiled in obsidian squares interrupted only by a colonnade that ringed the area. People moved about everywhere, they were all clad in the tight black leather of fools and there seemed to be no order to the place at all. Groups would form, discuss some matter and then disperse only to reform elsewhere. The parliament was in session, and the chaos was maddening. In the middle was a raised, round dais upon which was an empty seat that was a simple wrought iron frame with a wide strip of hide stretched between two members to sit upon. Karkat wasn't sure what he had been expecting when he knew where he was being taken to, but this certainly wasn't it. If anything, the parliament seemed closer to an endless raucous orgy then any kind of organisation. At his side was the fool who had brought him, never leaving arm's reach. Karkat was led to that dais in the middle of the room and the fool bade him stand before the empty chair.  
  
When Karkat stepped up, followed by the one he had come to think of as his fool, the sound of random chattering and laughing slowly began to still. The fool raised an arm, and he was patient in waiting to be noticed. There was a spreading circle of silence around him as fools gathered around and naturally turned to watch him out of some kind of curiosity. When the process was complete there was dead silence in that place under the ground, and Karkat looked around him to see a sea of variously painted faces, hovering like ghoulish disembodied visages in the darkness. The only light came from vague sources around the columns, here and there a candle or a paraffin lantern or the occasional candelabrum. The fool made a beckoning gesture, and from somewhere up above a massive chandelier in brass and copper was lowered down the central axis of the room from above, gradually illuminating the dais and its' occupants for all to see. The parliamentarians muttered fitfully amongst themselves, curious as to the provenance of this diminutive slave that had been brought before their dread judgement.  
  
Abruptly and apropos of nothing, the fool threw back his head and let out a high, piping whoop. He was answered variously from different points in the auditorium with whoops and yells. He did it again, louder, and the parliament stirred and responded in kind. It was like watching a clever tamer with his performing beast, Karkat realised. The fool knew just what he was doing.  
“So,” said the fool, prancing about the dais and grinning about him, “me went for a walk today.”  
There was a nickering and chatter from the parliament, and a few knowing laughs.  
“Me put on my travelling face and went up among the unfoolish,” he continued, “me went about and looked around. Me danced and sang, and look!” He held up a fist and opened it, letting a few coins fall with a merry jingle onto the stone surface of the dais, “sang for me supper!”  
  
The parliament apparently approved of this, and responded with ragged cheers and random whoops and yells to the fool's busking prowess. Karkat looked around him in confusion, there was clearly more to this interplay then was apparent at first sight, but it seemed too much that the fools just acted on whatever happened across their minds. They were difficult to read, but he was starting to think that his fool was more then he at first appeared. The lanky troll sank onto the little chair, leaning forwards with his hands dangling casually between his knees. He looked for all the world like someone enjoying a normal, polite conversation. He flicked his head back and gave out a low growl, and all of a sudden the room was quiet.  
“Travelling. Good for the soul, good for the body. Got my travelling face on now. Get me my fool's face.”  
There was a murmur, and the crowded parliament parted roughly to allow a fool to come forwards carrying a simple wooden box that he laid at the feet of the seated fool. Opening it, Karkat saw a range of bottle, unguents and thick inky pots of Kohl. The fool reached down and dipped a hooked finger into one of those pots, and casually started to apply black to the caked white of his face paint. He dabbed a pair of spots either side of his forehead, and pulled streaks of it in a mask across his eyes like a domino, broken by the savage white line of his nose. Where his face had been blank and unsupposing before, now there was a fearsome visage. The black Kohl made his eyes stand out like embers against his face. He began to grin, the expression spreading slowly and deliberately across his mien, like it was a conscious decision he was making, like the grin was another element of the mask that he applied with as much deliberation.  
  
“You're him, aren't you?” Karkat breathed, “you're lord Gamsie.”  
“No,” answered the fool, before he dabbed a few more lines over his lips, enhancing and making more fearful his smile. “Ah. Now I am. Look at that, me near forgot meself.”  
The parliament started to cackle and shriek, clapping and stamping their feet. They were behaving as though a new person was suddenly seated before them, who wasn't there before. Karkat realised that, in a strange atavistic sense, that was entirely true- the man was not present without the mask, the mask was animated by the man.  
“Lord Gamsie,” Karkat said again, dropping to his knees.  
“Why you kneel, boy?”  
“I'm just a slave,” Karkat murmured softly, “let me go. Please- let me go, I need to get back to my Mistress.”  
“Do you fear for your life?”  
“Yes.”  
  
The voice was different, now. Where the fool had been light-hearted if edged with a mad cackle to his voice, lord Gamsie was slower, more deliberate. His voice was lower and drawn out in a lazy drawl. Karkat had to remind himself that this was the same person, so complete had been the transformation. Everything about the man was a performance, he wore personalities as lightly as another might wear a new coat.  
  
“Why?”  
“You're lord Gamsie...”  
“Yes.”  
“And they-” Karkat waved behind him, not looking up from the floor, “are the black parliament.”  
“Are you?” Gamsie called out, and the crowd answered him with a delighted laugh, “yes, that's who they are.”  
“They say, the black parliament take your eyes if you see their home.”  
It was a common enough legend. Slaves would talk, no matter how their owners beat them, and in quiet moments in the kennels Karkat had heard all of the lurid rumours that the slaves told to amuse themselves. Most of the stories about the black parliament centred on how they would punish the wicked, for crimes that made sense only to the fools. Karkat's fellow slaves had delighted in speculating as to what the black parliament would make of this or that officious and cruel master.  
“Is that all?” Lord Gamsie seemed amused, “go on.”  
“I don't want to say,”  
“Go on, ye!”  
“Uh! The- the black parliament only gather when the moon is full! They write out their laws in a book made of skinned children! And it is written in blood, too. They say.”  
“Me think they say a lot of things,” Gamsie smirked, “I'd like to see them say them to me face.”  
  
Karkat cringed, he could feel their stares and hear mocking laughs from the gallery. This might have been a prelude to his execution, it would be entirely within the character of the dreaded black parliament to toy with him thus before the kill. It wasn't fair- he had never asked for any of this, and his Mistress had sent him out without so much as a second thought. If he'd known he was to go to the fools, he would have begged her to keep him in the house. Now he would die, at the end of the day when he had experienced the most freedom in his short and bitter life. Karkat frowned, and grit his teeth. It wasn't fair, and he was angry. It wouldn't stop them tearing him limb from limb though. That being the case, Karkat decided if he was to die then he might as well speak his mind a little. He stood up and faced lord Gamsie directly.  
“Which face would that be?” Karkat snapped, “who's the face under the mask, or doesn't he ever come out?”  
That got a reaction. Gamsie sat bolt upright and stiffened. The room was still. Karkat glanced around fearfully- every parliamentarian was frozen, in a weird tableaux of figures, all waiting to see how the lord of the fools replied.  
“You're a snippy little snit,” said Gamsie slowly, with a threatening growl in his voice.  
“Well, what's to do about it, then?”  
Gamsie stared coldly at him for a long time, a drawn out period of tension that made Karkat's palms ache where his nails dug in.  
“Laugh, laugh, laugh!”  
Gamsie threw back his head and howled with mad, fierce laughter and as one the black parliament joined him. The tension soared out of the room as the laughter became ragged, tired and honest. Gamsie said something to Karkat, but it was impossible to hear above the din.  
  
In time, the parliamentarians began to settle again, having let out their pent-up energy they became more amiable and relaxed, slouching over and swaying slowly. Some of them sat cross-legged on the floor, they were like truculent children gathered around their father as he read out a story. Lord Gamsie held up the package Karkat had delivered and opened it with care. The outer packaging was calfskin parchment with a waxed surface to protect it, sealed with cord. Gamsie dropped this pale caul to the floor beside him, and carefully unfolded the small packet of letters within.  
“Boy. You read human-scrawl?”  
“Yes, I mean, I can a little.” Karkat had never done well for letting on how well he could read and remember, and he didn't intend to start now.  
“Here then. Read to us.” Gamsie thrust out the delicate bundle of papers to Karkat, who took them gingerly. Looking down he saw that each page was carefully folded into a square, there were four in total but the cautious way they were folded had made the little packet seem thicker. He carefully opened out the pages one at a time, and stared at the crabbed, neat print of his Mistress. What he saw made the hairs on the back of his neck rise up against the enclosing slave collar.  
“I don't want to read this,” Karkat's voice was a whisper, but the black parliament had stilled again and heard him clearly.  
“Read it,” Gamsie said smoothly.  
“I don't think I can,”  
Gamsie reached out. He was a lot closer then Karkat realised, he placed a hand on Karkat's shoulder. Karkat could feel the tension in his grip, the effort it took for him not to crush, and claw, and rip. Gamsie stroked the side of his neck gently, with slightly shivering fingers.  
“Read.”  
  
Karkat stared down at the page in disbelief. The writing was certainly that of his Mistress, he had watched her working at her desk, he had taken this same package from Rookfeather and received his instructions, and between that time and the delivery of it, the package had been a constant presence at his side, stuffed into his shirt. There was no way that it could have been taken from him or replaced by another, and even if that ha happened he fancied he would have noticed that the writing was not that of his Mistress. His every sense told him that there was no trickery, and that what he was reading was nothing more or less then what his Mistress had been writing when he had seen her.  
  
The correspondence began with one sentence across the top of the page, and Karkat scanned his eyes over it repeatedly, trying to divine the meaning behind it. His lips moved silently as he took in the words, and tried to think of something to say aloud.  
  
 _My dearest Karkat;_  
 _As this correspondence reaches you & am gladden'd that you have shewn great faith & bravery. It is with light heart that I confided these correspondences to you, though it pained me to deceive you thus- you are yourself the intended recipient of this missive._  
  
The letter was addressed to him, personally. He had travelled across the entire city and stood literally in the grip of lord Gamsie and his black parliament of fools, only to read a letter that had been meant for him the whole time. He felt that hand on his neck.  
  
 _Do not fear for yrself, know that I have chosen to set matters in motion for a reason & that you are only one part of it. Things have been set in motion so as to protect & vouchsafe you from your current peril & any harm that may befall. For now, you must show a greater bravery still, & repeat alowd the following words to lord Gamsie who I know is with you right now._  
  
Karkat swallowed heavily and read the next lines carefully. He had moments before lord Gamsie became impatient with him, he knew. Clearing his throat, he raised a quavering voice and read aloud.  
“Greetings to noble lord Gamsie of the black parliament of fools, of the troll's quarter, and of the people of same. These are the words of lady Rose, she of the Rose House.”  
Gamsie was smiling broadly again, glad to be getting at last to business, but he still hadn't taken his hand off Karkat.  
“Lord Gamsie,” Karkat continued, stumbling a little over the longer words “your black parliament has had dealings with the Rose House in the past, to our mutual benefit. It is my belief that we may once again draw from a fruitful relationship to both of our gain. The Rose House holds your black parliament in the greatest of esteem in all things and will await your earliest convenience in sending your regards. Yours in sincerity, the lady Rose of the House of that name, she of the unbroken line of the Rose House, holder of the Rose seal, defender of that House and its' possessions.”  
  
The writing was in a large, florid script that was hard for Karkat to read, and when he finished reading he had only just reached the fourth page. Gamsie flicked his eyes down to the page and up again.  
“It seem there is more to read, boy.”  
Karkat glanced down. Underneath the signature of the lady Rose, the letter continued. Again, addressed to him.  
  
 _Tell him there is no more to read except further titles and signatures._  
  
“No more,” said Karkat, “it just goes on with her titles. Signatures and things.”  
“Humans!” Gamsie laughed, “always a name for anything, and then another and another and another after it. Why not call a thing what that thing is?”  
  
 _Ask him why put on a mask instead of letting the face be what it is._  
  
“I might well ask why you would paint your face instead of letting the thing be what the thing is,” Karkat said, his lip shaking, but he tried to show no fear. His Mistress had bid him be brave.  
“What boy? What say ye there?”  
Gamsie shook his great head, his hair flared out around him like a black mane. He yanked Karkat close, and now his fingers were snaking around the back of Karkat's neck and threatening to break him. He could see a sudden anger in Gamsie that had been there all along, hidden well beneath paint and a smile, but a rage nonetheless. Just the first wrong word was enough to bring it out, and Gamsie was ready to kill. The parliament knew what was coming and motioned restlessly, craning necks forwards with eyes bright and smiles wide. Karkat whimpered, he was about to die. He barely had the strength to lift the single sheet of paper left in his hand and glance out of the corner of his eye.  
  
 _Reach up Karkat, touch his cheek._  
  
Karkat blinked.  
  
 _NOW._  
  
He did as he was told, lifting his hand and placing it against the side of Gamsie's face, touching him. He felt thick make-up, far more dry and powder-like then he had been expecting, crackle under his fingertips. Lord Gamsie reacted as though he had been struck a blow from a great fist, letting out a long low breath of air in a deep sigh. His entire body relaxed immediately, and Karkat found himself coming down from the tiptoes he hadn't realised he'd been dragged up upon. Karkat gazed fearfully into the eyes of the fool, uncertain what he was seeing. A sense of sudden and shockingly cold calmness passed through the raving mind of the mad fool, and in the wake of that great wave the waters were left stilled and quiet. Karkat patted him gently, not quite able to believe what he was seeing. The black parliament rose up as one, suddenly chattering and commenting madly.  
  
Karkat felt a hand on his own and looked back sharply, Gamsie had reached up and gently taken hold of Karkat's hand at the wrist, holding it there. His smile was wry and knowing now, he was brought back to his senses. Karkat realised that he was seeing the lord Gamsie in a state of calmness and lucidity that he had perhaps not experienced in some time.  
“What's happening,” Karkat whispered.  
“Boldness that comes out of weakness,” Gamsie replied almost dreamily, “a great fierce bravery from the tiniest little slave. Me like that.”  
Lord Gamsie stood up, standing straight and holding his arms aloft for his parliament to hush and give ear. He nodded briskly, and patted Karkat on the head.  
“Me like him, little man of the Rose House. I say, we talk to lady Rose.”  
At that the black parliament was uneasy, and there were scattered shouts. At the same time, there were also excitable yelps and exhortations, exclaiming that it was a deliciously mad thing to do.  
  
Gamsie looped a curling finger through the large brass ring affixed to Karkat's collar possessively.  
“We will go into chambers, and draft our letters. This one will take our wishes back to lady Rose. What say ye, black parliament?”  
By now they were getting excitable again, and Gamsie put a hand to his ear theatrically, mugging and grinning at the baying crowd. The impression was of excited children, and the mood was a happy one again as the thoughts of the parliament shifted into agreement with their lord.  
“Yes, good.” Gamsie said vaguely, before striding off the dais and tugging Karkat casually along with him, “boy will bring letters to the lady Rose for me. Good boy. New friend.”  
  



	10. Chapter 10

Karkat found himself once again within the private chambers of a powerful figure, waiting on them as they wrote diligently. This time he was in the lair of Lord Gamsie, and he tried to make himself as small and invisible as possible as Gamsie fussed about. Karkat had been observing Gamsie closely, and he had noticed that the fool seemed to have a new performance for every situation, and that every situation was just another performance. Gamsie had spent some time re-blackening his lips and whitening the makeup around his eyes before applying deep-black mascara. It was a subtle change but he was skilled, and he looked like a different person. A different face, now that he was not addressing his black parliament.  
  
Gamsie had not only changed his face; his whole demeanour was very different in his quarters to how he had been in public. Where he had been every bit the capering fool, dancing and joking for applause, he was now more quiet and reserved. He went about his room thoughtfully, placing the things he would need upon his writing desk and inviting Karkat to approach before he sat himself down to write. Lord Gamsie's subterranean home was tiled in glossy black-and-purple chequers along the walls, and everywhere were boxes, closets and wardrobes filled with various costumes and devices. His home was as much an elaborate dressing-room as it was a place of repose.  
  
Lord Gamsie carelessly screwed up the letter from lady Rose and tossed it onto the fire that crackled low in its' grate set into the wall. Karkat caught his breath as he watched the paper curl and blacken, and lord Gamsie saw his consternation.  
“Better to be rid of it, it's a letter not to be shared around and I have heard the message.”  
“As you say, lord.”  
Lord Gamsie arranged what he would need across his desk, reaching for a quill pen and ink-pot, and a page of parchment.  
“Boy,” he said softly, and his voice was far more measured and even then before.  
“Yes, lord?”  
“How shall I write to your lady Rose?”  
“As it pleases you to, lord.”  
“I mean, what do you think I should write?”  
“It wouldn't be my place to say.”  
Gamsie regarded him wryly, swivelling his eyes to stare at the boy nervously fidgeting beside him. He reached out and plucked Karkat's wrist in his hand, slowly and rhythmically stroking his thumb over Karkat's skinny wrist bones.  
“And if it was your place to say, what would you have me write?”  
Karkat thought about this, “I suppose I would suggest you respond in kind, announce your position at the top of the letter. All your titles, and such.” He nodded vaguely.  
“I shall write it, and then you shall read it out to her, yes?”  
“If it please you, lord.”  
  
Gamsie seemed pleased indeed with this little game, and dabbed the tip of his quill merrily in the ink-pot to begin writing in a crabbed, awkward script. Karkat could tell that he was unfamiliar with  letters and found them difficult, but he persevered and wrote in the harsh angular letter of trolls.  
  
 _The Lord Gamsie, the Lord of the Black Parliament of Fools, the Lord of Fools and Joculators, the Master of the Dread and Forbidden Guild of Fools offers greeting to lady Rose, she of the Rose House._  
  
“How is that, boy? Impressive, no?”  
“Yes, lord.”  
“Read it out to me.”  
Karkat glanced over the page and read the words aloud smoothly, while lord Gamsie watched him with a feral intensity.  
“Not many slaves can read in both human-script and troll-script alike, boy.”  
Karkat hesitated, and paled. He had read it a little too quickly, and revealed his ease with letters.  
“As you say my lord,” he replied blandly, staring directly ahead. Gamsie watched him still, appraising him carefully.  
“As I say. Now then, what shall I say next, do you think?”  
“I wouldn't know, lord.”  
“Speculate.”  
Karkat hesitated and fiddled with the hem of his shirt, “perhaps you might complement the lady Rose for her kind words?”  
Lord Gamsie nodded and bent over the page, writing further.  
  
 _Lord Gamsie offers thanks to the lady Rose for the kindnesses of her correspondence, as delivered superbly by her faithful servant the boy Karkat._  
  
“Slave,” said Karkat quietly, “not servant.”  
“Read it as I write it, boy.”  
“Yes.”  
Lord Gamsie brushed the edge of the quill across his lips, staining the edge of the feather with black, “what next?”  
“Lord, why are you asking me this? I shouldn't say.”  
“I like the way you speak,” Gamsie mused, “I like watching you thinking. I like the way your brain works.”  
Karkat knew he had no way out of it, and whatever pleased this lord of fools would be for Karkat to abide and there was nothing to be done about that.  
“Well, lord, you would perhaps write your answer to lady Rose.”  
“And what is my answer, you think?”  
Karkat looked up sharply. This game was becoming decidedly unfair. He had no idea what he was being asked, or how he was expected to know what the lord Gamsie thought about anything.  
“You're unfair to me,” Karkat said. His hands were pressed tightly to his side, to stop them forming impotent fists.  
“How am I unfair?”  
“You ask me things I can't answer!”  
Gamsie leaned over slightly, and planted his elbow on his gangling knee, and his chin atop his fist. He looked like a sculpted figure, an artist's impression of a person. Karkat realised suddenly that an impression was exactly what he was dealing with; Gamsie's impersonation of what a sensible and powerful lord would look like in thoughtful repose.  
“How am I unfair boy?”  
“You-” Karkat hesitated, thinking it through, “you should be the one telling me what to do.”  
“Is it so unfair to ask what you want?”  
“No one asks me what I want.”  
“A good fool always says what no one else does.”  
Karkat frowned fiercely, and stared at his feet. Despite the reasonable, measured answers Gamsie was giving him there was more to it that was unsaid. He felt that he was being made fun of and needled in some subtle, expert way.  
“Yes, but you do it for the sake of the thing,” Karkat slowly lifted his head, he was starting to see the fool as he truly was, his picture of Gamsie was becoming complete and all of the masks and theatrics were slowly falling away before his eyes, “you up-end things just to see what's squirming underneath, you say things to people just to see what they will do! You treat people like funny toys. You're not fair!”  
“You're a very clever thing, aren't you. You're different.”  
Karkat looked away.  
“Come,” Gamsie set to his writing again, “what should I say next. I let you choose- as my gift for a special boy.”  
“Then say to lady Rose that you will return her friendship and affections,” Karkat said flatly, deciding that it was his turn to be the one doing the testing, “and that the parliament will help the Rose House.”  
“Agreed.”  
  
 _The Lord Gamsie returns his most affectionate esteem to the lady of the Rose House, along with his bond in the coming days in the understanding that a friendship that was once may be once again._  
  
Lord Gamsie finished with another selection of his titles and a flourishing signature, before blotting the page dry and sealing it in a packet similar to the one that Karkat had brought to him, handing it to the slave.  
“There. Your wish is granted.”  
“Just like that?”  
“For you, yes, just like that.”  
“Why?”  
Gamsie smiled wryly, he had a different smile for every occasion, “you see through me boy, I do like to do what will cause trouble. Perhaps you do not know yet just how much fuss your little wish is going to cause.”  
Karkat caught his breath in his throat, suddenly wary of what he had done, “what will happen?”  
“If we know what is going to happen, we will become bored,” Gamsie answered simply, before clasping Karkat's hand and then kissing him briefly on the forehead and cheek, “but promise you'll come and visit me again soon.”  
“If I am permitted, lord.”  
“And Karkat?”  
“Lord?”  
“I warn you- beware the prince of the waters. You'll not have made a friend in him when the news of this gets out!”  
Karkat began to feel as though he was drowning already. He was being pulled in different directions by strange, unknowable currents and he found himself in the middle of things he couldn't even conceive of.  
  
Karkat returned to the Rose house unmolested, and as the great iron gates closed behind him he felt a dual sensation of both constricting confinement around him once again and also a comforting sense of the familiar. The time he had spent in the city moving where he thought best, going where he decided to go and doing what he judged best to do had been intoxicating and also overwhelming. He wanted to sleep for a week. Fortunately by the time he arrived the day was long gone and night had firmly descended. There were no more duties for him to perform and he wanted to get to his little room as soon as possible. Rookfeather met him at the servant's entrance near the kitchens. The elderly retainer carried a small candle in a holder, and in the low weak light he looked to be carved out of purest ebony in his black robes.  
“Karkat, you return,” he said blandly.  
“Yes, Master. And I have this- an answer for the lady Rose.” Karkat held out the packet he carried and Rookfeather snatched it up in surprise, glancing about into the dark of the gardens and ushering Karkat into the house hurriedly. Rookfeather pulled the oaken door closed and bolted it firmly before letting out a relieved sigh.  
“I admit I am surprised. I had hoped you would be back sooner then this, and I felt certain that as night fell you would be back in the morning, or perhaps not at all.”  
Karkat glanced up ruefully, “I wouldn't run away, Master.”  
“No, no forgive me boy, I know you are of better stuff then that.”  
“I am a Rose, Master.”  
Rookfeather's face crinkled into a smile, “yes, you are at that.”  
“Oh, how is Master Dirk?”  
“He is well. He has slept much, and his strength will return slowly. I have told him to stay a-bed at least for the week, and I believe that we will not have to send for a surgeon.”  
“You are wise, Master.”  
“I do what I can, and I have learned a thing or two in my years, young Karkat! Now then. Come, sit and have some supper.”  
  
Rookfeather led him to the kitchen and placed the candle on the great table, inviting Karkat to sit with him and giving him bread and cold soup to nourish him after his travails. The soup was fresh that morning and the bread was hearty and good. Karkat felt better after just a bite of it, and smiled affectionately at Rookfeather. For all his chilly demeanour, the old man had cared for him consistently since he had come to the house, as he cared for Dirk now. In his own way, Rookfeather was the keeper of the house's heart.  
  
“I imagine you have had quite the adventure today, Karkat.”  
“Oh yes, Master. It has been very... adventurous.”  
Rookfeather held up the packet, “this is very surprising. Normally it takes the fools a good month or two of arguing and bickering before they decide to do anything so certain as pen a letter.”  
“Really?”  
“Yes indeed. I expected you to return with a message that we would hear something in a while, and that would be that for the rest of the year. I suppose you must have made a good impression, lad!”  
Karkat grinned and just shrugged. He had been trying to push the matter out of his mind, and especially what he had read of the letter from lady Rose, he tried to concentrate on his food.  
“Tell me boy,” Rookfeather touched the tips of his fingers together and studied Karkat, “what was lord Gamsie like?”  
“Hm. He is... very much a fool.”  
“A diplomatic answer, you're learning fast.”  
“Thank you for the soup, Master.”  
“I will bring the letter to lady Rose for her to read in the morning when she wakes.”  
“Oh, she can read troll-script?”  
“Karkat? What do you mean by that?”  
“Lord Gamsie wrote his answer in troll-script, he told me to read it to lady Rose.”  
“I see! Well we are not free of lord Gamsie's tricks, then. He is more then able to write in human-script you know. He has done this to make a point no doubt.”  
“Master- can he read human writing?”  
“Of course, he is a lord after all.”  
“But- he had me read out the letter to him! I had to stand in front of the black parliament and read it all out!”  
“Oh my goodness, did he now? Karkat, you were meant to deliver the message, you were not expected to haul yourself up in from the of the black parliament itself!”  
“I didn't have much choice, Master.”  
Rookfeather shook his head. “Games, endless games. It never changes, with fools. Very well, you're to come to me at first light, lady Rose will need you to read out the letter.”  
  
Karkat's head was spinning. He realised that lord Gamsie had tricked him, by playing on his assumption that the troll would not be able to read the human writing. Karkat had never even considered that Gamsie might be able to read the entire thing himself. Had Gamsie seen it? Had he read any of it? Karkat thought not, but he had no way of being certain. Karkat had the same feeling again, of drowning in a whirlpool of currents pulling him about in every direction. The games of the fools were nothing he wanted anything to do with and now he found himself apparently a pawn of lord Gamsie himself! Rookfeather could see that Karkat was becoming tense again from thinking about the travails of his day. He reached across the table and clasped Karkat's arm briefly.  
“Come lad, to bed with you.”  
Karkat looked around slowly. The shadows had drawn in, and even where the occasional night-candle burned the pools of light were frustratingly vague and ill-formed, little more then reminders of what light could be. The paintings where out there, too. Hundreds of them lining the walls between the kitchen and his room.  
“Master?”  
“Yes, boy?”  
“Would... you come with me?” He blushed, ashamed to show such an obvious fear of the dark. For his part, Rookfeather favoured him with another of his rare smiles and nodded, lifting himself up to his feet. He lifted the candle and beckoned.  
“Come, you can help an old man with the stairs, young Karkat.”  
“Gladly, Master.”  
  
Both of them went out into the night-darkened house with a candle between them, and there was nothing untoward to be seen. Karkat let Rookfeather lean on his shoulder as they ascended the great staircase. Rookfeather took labouring breaths, and Karkat was sure to help the old man as much as he could. Just a day's separation had shown Karkat how fond he had grown of old Rookfeather, and he wanted to find some way to show it. Rookfeather seemed to be in contemplative mood as they walked in their little island of candle light through the black of the house.  
“Tell me, Karkat, do trolls face evil?”  
“Evil, Master? I suppose everyone has to shoulder misfortune in life.”  
“No Karkat, I mean evil. True evil, malevolent and dark. Evil that is not just the lack of good fortune and love, evil that is active and living. Evil that reaches out for you.”  
“Um.”  
“Karkat,” Rookfeather stopped and placed a hand on the space between Karkat's shoulder blades.  
“Master?”  
“Evil is a real thing. Karkat. And when evil finds a way into the world, it must be faced and fought.”  
“I see, Master.”  
“No you do not, and if you are lucky you never will. But remember this. Remember...” Rookfeather paused and Karkat, glancing up fearfully for a moment, saw him staring off into the dark galleries which now were defined only by the odd spot of moonlight.  
“Master?”  
“Sometimes, evil cannot be defeated, there is nothing to be done.”  
“Oh,”  
“But you can still fight.” Rookfeather chuckled, “or else you'll live to grow old and regretful. That's no life at all.”  
“Master, are you well?” Karkat was genuinely concerned now, and he didn't like the way that Rookfeather's eyes glinted wetly in the candle's light.  
“I am well, I am well. This whole affair just brings up bad memories, that is all. Best to leave the past sleeping.”  
“I understand, Master.”  
“Ah. But even the deepest sleep can be cut short by a nightmare, can't it? Do trolls have nightmares?”  
“Yes, they do, Master.”  
“Come, to-morrow is a new day. Time to rest.”  
“Yes, Master.”  
  



	11. Chapter 11

The morrow brought a new day, and Karkat went about his business in the house. It was as though nothing had happened- the same chores required doing, the same work lay ahead of him as it had done before everything had happened. That was the way of things in the Rose house, Karkat reflected. Moments of change and excitement, and then that feeling of incipient change receded and suddenly all was normal again. Karkat had no idea whether this wildly lurching sense of capricious fortune was normal among humans or if it was unique to the Rose house, he had no basis of comparison. It did explain a lot about humans though, he suspected. He did not see the lady Rose that day, though he went about the house from top to tail. He daren't ask after her either, he knew that he would be summoned when the time was right and not before. Before the evening mean Rookfeather came to him. He stood in the doorway to the Long Gallery where Karkat was busy polishing the brasses and coughed discreetly. When Karkat looked up the old man nodded gravely.  
“She is ready, she calls for you now.”  
“I understand, Master.”  
  
Karkat took a moment to change into clean shirt and breeches before he made his way to her quarters, and announced his presence with a soft knock. He waited patiently until he was called in, and took his accustomed place beside the writing desk where she waited. As ever, the lady Rose was busy with her correspondences and Karkat waited silently until she spoke to him. Her fair skin glowed in the ruddy light of sunset through her high windows, and she wore a delicate lavender dress with her hair gathered up in a black band.  
“Good evening, boy.”  
“Good evening, mum.”  
“Have I disturbed you in your labours?”  
“My labours are yours mum, and yours to end as you see fit.”  
The lady put away her quill, balancing the nib in that odd little inkpot Karkat had noticed the last time he was there. It still gnawed at him to see it, the object was the only item in the entire room that was less then pristine and perfect.  
“You have been very patient with me, boy. More so then even a lady has a right to ask of her slave, I think.”  
“If it please you, mum.”  
“And I have been cruel,” she sighed, ignoring him, “I have treated you less then plainly and served you ill fortune, I think.” She waited and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, “what do you think of that?”  
“What would you have me think, mum?”  
“I would very much like to feel that we might become friends, Karkat.”  
Karkat swallowed heavily. This was the woman who literally owned the hide on his back, who could have him beaten and punished, even killed if she wanted it. They were a lot of things to each other no doubt, but he had no way, emotionally, to be her friend.  
“I don't think that would be quite right, mum. I'm your boy, you needn't worry over my friendship.”  
“It's a thing I want, should I not ask it? I can ask all of you, my slave, can I not ask for your friendship too?”  
“I don't think- I am not that, mum. I'm your slave, and I'd not be serving you well to be so forward mum.”  
“There's just no arguing with you is there, boy?”  
“It's not my will mum, it's the way the world is.”  
“Will you at least see me with some affection beyond that of a good boy to his owner?”  
“As you will it, mum.”  
  
Rose turned to her desk and placed her hands down on the surface one over the other. It was not an answer she wanted but one she could evidently live with.  
“You performed your task admirably for me boy, and better then I expected.”  
Karkat swallowed hotly, he felt like he was trying to force a warm coal down his throat and his tears threatened to spring to his eyes, but he held fast. He almost said something, the words were building up behind his lips, but he held back and just looked down at his feet. Rose saw, and knew.  
“Speak freely boy.”  
“Mum.”  
“Karkat! Speak freely, it's not a request but a command to you!”  
He breathed out harshly. He had to speak, it was another of those outbursts he had found himself prone to, and there was no fighting it now.  
“How can you say you didn't expect me to do as I did, mum? You knew it all, you knew everything that would happen before I even trod foot outside these gates!”  
“Ah yes, the letter of course. Did you read it?”  
“You know I did mum!”  
“No I do not! If I have... some foresight of what may come to pass, that is a long way from foreknowledge. I only knew that there might come a moment you would read that letter, and what words would serve you well.”  
“How could you know? Do you see the future?”  
“That is a secret, Karkat. I only share secrets with my friends.”  
Karkat winced. In her own way she had ensnared him once again, with her talk of friendship. He began to realise that whatever she wanted of him she would have from him, one way or the other. Just like everyone else, he reflected bitterly. Once more he was adrift on uncalm waters peopled with strange things below that reached out for him.  
“At least tell me why it was I you sent, mum?”  
“Because. You're special, Karkat. I have told you before, though you scarce believe it. You are one who will be able to do that which others cannot, in the days to come. And you can see the truth in people when you look into them. Anyone else I had sent, I think lord Gamsie would have killed. But not you, Karkat.”  
“I think he came close to killing me.”  
“Close doesn't count. Just ask Dirk,” she chuckled softly, as at some private inner jest.  
“What will happen now?”  
“We will see. Tell me what Gamsie said to you, and leave out nothing.”  
“Do you not know already?”  
“I do not. I am honest with you Karkat, I do not.”  
There it was. Whatever her strange prescience, there were obviously some limitations to the power that the lady Rose seemed to wield. It gave Karkat a little strange comfort to know so. She read the letter from Gamsie, and Karkat recited the events of that day. He told her about his audience with the black parliament and it's dread lord, Gamsie.  
  
“So,” said Rose, offering him one of her littler, reserved smiles, “he agrees to be my friend. And all because you asked him to.”  
“Was I right mum?”  
“I was more then impressed that you arrived back on your own, unmolested and whole, but to have secured this too from lord Gamsie and his black parliament of fools, too- boy, you cannot know your worth to me right now.”  
“Thank you, mum.”  
The lady Rose was almost giddy for a moment, flushed with her own success.  
“It's not enough to give you my thanks, my Karkat. You have done more for me then any other, and you are so clever and so good to me.”  
“Thank you, mum.”  
“You are my good boy, I will reward you. Ask me for a boon and it is yours if in my power to give.”  
Karkat looked up sharply. This was no small thing she was saying, and the weight of the statement hung heavy in the room. He licked suddenly dry lips.  
“You... mean... mum-”  
“Yes boy, even your freedom I would give to you if you'd ask it of me. I can deny you nothing for the service you have rendered me.”  
  
Karkat thought about this, his feelings swam around him like a whirlpool. Freedom- and so simply given. Such a nothing, such a small thing. A flick of her wrist, a signature on the correct paper, and the collar would come off. He would be free... Karkat pulled himself up short. Free to do what? Free to go where? He had been born a slave and he had always assumed he would die one. He knew nothing of the greater wide world, really. Out there, who would he be? What would he do? In the Rose House he was Karkat, favoured boy of the lady Rose. He had his turret room, his blanket. He had Rookfeather and Dirk, and Chef and the kitchen lads. He had his polishing and cleaning, he had his red-tile steps down to the kitchens that needed scrubbing, he had weeds to pull in the gardens. He had hot dinners of pie and mash with the boys, human food he had come to relish, dripping with grease and salt. If the ghosts of the house terrified him, so did the human warmth and companionship he had found warm him. Karkat realised with a sudden cold clarity that he did not wish to leave the Rose House, no matter how it oppressed him in the nights, no matter how he shivered in the icy mornings or trembled in the dark. The House was in him now, and he was part of the House. He was a Rose, and it was no simple thing to simply say that he would walk away at the first opportunity that came to him. He simply couldn't do it.  
  
Karkat looked around him in a daze, and the lady Rose waited patiently. To offer such a boon was a great honour indeed and she understood how it must overwhelm him. She waited for him to say that which she knew he had to, that he would have his freedom from her.  
  
Karkat swallowed dryly. He didn't want to go.  
  
“I don't want to leave your service, mum.”  
“You would stay then, of your own will?”  
“I would, mum.”  
“What then will you ask of me boy? You cannot offend me by refusing my boon, I insist that you will be rewarded. What will you have?”  
“And I can ask of you anything, mum?”  
“If it is in my power. Do be gentle, Karkat!” She teased. Karkat blushed.  
  
He had been pushed and pulled, used as a playing-piece in some great game he did not understand and could barely see. He had been tricked and terrified, and there was some small, deep part of him that wanted some recompense for this. It was the part of him that ached to shout and scream at everyone around him, the part that kept getting him into trouble. But it was also that part of him that had put lord Gamsie and his black parliament on the back-foot and gained a great favour, it was the part that had practically yelled at lady Rose. That part of him could be pushed down, but not ignored. And it knew things. He had a voice in him that told him what people were thinking about, and told him what really mattered to them. It told him how to get what he wanted and protect himself. Now, that little voice was telling him exactly what he had to do.  
  
“There is something that I want, nothing very expensive.”  
“Then ask, my Karkat. New clothes? Shoes? Would you like a larger room?”  
“I would like your ink-well.”  
  
Karkat extended a hand and pointed. Lady Rose froze, her face paled and for the first time she looked less then absolutely composed. Even when she had sent him away in anger, she had not lost control of her expression for a moment.  
  
“Ask anything else, boy.”  
“I have asked for my boon, mum.”  
“Ask anything but that!”  
Karkat took a breath, steeling himself, “I've said what I have said, mum.”  
She reached out for the little ink-well and tapped closed the hinged wooden lid. With shaking fingers she gathered it up and passed the little thing to him.  
“I am nothing of not bound by my word Karkat,” she said gravely, “so, it is yours.”  
He closed his fingers around it carefully. It weighed barely anything, the little pot nestled comfortably in his fist. “Thank you, mum.”  
“Be careful though, look after it Karkat.”  
“I shall, mum.”  
  
They stared at one another. Something had shifted between them, something tectonically potent. Though he had submitted to remain her slave, he now held the upper hand in the balance of power between them, in some subtle way. There had been power in her promise to grant him anything she could grant, he had known that she was bound by her words. There was power, too, in the little ink-well though he had no idea of its providence. Now the ink-well was his, given to him freely by lady Rose. He knew on some deep, atavistic level that the item could not simply be taken back from him; until he too gave it up of his own accord it was fundamentally his.  
  
“What will you do now, Karkat?”  
“Well mum, if it please you, I have to finish polishing the brasses in the Long Gallery, and then the scullery needs a little work. We're to finish white-washing the pantry by weeks' end, mum.”  
“What you have taken from me... you will now wander off to your chores?”  
“If it please you, mum.”  
“Karkat,”  
“Yes, mum.”  
“You're very special.”  
“Thank you, mum.”  
“I am glad that you're on my side.”  
Karkat bowed stiffly. “I am a Rose, mum.”  
  
Karkat left with her leave, and departed the quarters of lady Rose. He felt a slight sense of satisfaction; for once he was taking the lead in events and shaping matters instead of respond to them. He knew one thing for sure- while he had the ink-well, the lady Rose would take great care to ensure his safety. He went down the great stair to the Long Gallery, in order to continue his work. Talk about great plans among the houses was all very well, but there were still brasses to be polished and the work of a slave was never done.  
  
In the gallery he set to work, and went off into the idle daydreams of one who has plentiful tasks to get done and no particular need to use their brain to do so. His hands worked of their own accord and he settled into a solid working rhythm. The great fire had been lit previously, and was by now crackling fitfully amid the remains of the log that had been set in the fireplace that morning. Usually a good sized log or two would keep a fire going all day, and the warmth gradually spread around the lower floor when the fire was high. Karkat heard voices, and listened without really paying attention as they drew closer.  
“You're a fool then, and you'll split your guts open!”  
“Hush, old crow, I'm well enough to be on my feet and I'll not rot in bed another day.”  
“Will you please listen to me, for once?”  
“I promise to go easy on myself, will that satisfy you?”  
 Karkat looked up as Dirk and Rookfeather came into the gallery. It was good to see Dirk on his feet again, though he was obviously not quite himself. He favoured one side, limping slightly, and his cheeks were ashen-grey. He bore a long leather roll under one arm and it clanked when he set it down on the long table. Rookfeather noticed Karkat was there and snapped his fingers irritably. Karkat scampered to his feet and jogged over to where the men waited.  
“Karkat!”  
“Master?”  
“Dirk insists on being up and about for whatever reason. See to it he does not tax himself, and if he opens up that wound you come and find me immediately, you hear?”  
“Yes Master, I will.”  
Rookfeather leaned over slightly, placing a hand on Karkat's shoulder and murmuring softly.  
“Dirk needs a little exercise to show he's still a fit blade. We'll let him play, but see him off to bed before long, mm?”  
“Master,” whispered Karkat, nodding.  
Rookfeather patted him on the back fondly, and made his way out of the gallery, admonishing Dirk all the way and receiving plenty of retort in turn.  
  
Dirk unrolled the leather across the table, and it was filled with blades of all type and kind, held in place with leather thongs and bindings. Like a craftsman's tool roll, whose only craft was death. Dirk selected a couple of longer knives, and glanced over to the doorway as Rookfeather left.  
“Go there boy, see that the old crow has left us.”  
Karkat looked at him warily but complied, walking over to the doorway and nodding back to Dirk when he saw there was nobody outside.  
“Good. Come here lad, I want to show you something.”  
“As you say, Master.”  
Dirk sniffed and examined the blade in his hand carefully, staring into his reflection in the polished, oiled steel.  
“Call me Dirk, lad.”  
“As you say, Dirk,” Karkat answered smoothly. Dirk glanced at him, surprised at his untoward confidence, but nodding in acknowledgement.  
“I told you before that I'd show you a little knifeplay, remember?”  
“Yes,”  
“Well now's as good a time as any. While I'm laid up in bed that's one less blade raised for the Rose, and that doesn't sit well with me. I told Rookfeather I just wanted to practise a little, do not tell him I'm showing you any of this. He wouldn't approve of me teaching you, I think.”  
“Ah... I understand.” Karkat did understand. Humans were always up to things behind each other's backs.  
“Right. Hold out your arm at your side, like you're pointing at something in the distance.”  
  
It was an odd request, but Karkat complied. Dirk stood behind him and leant over, sighting down the length of Karkat's arm. He put the fingertips of one hand in the hollow of Karkat's elbow and took up his wrist with the other, then he gently bent Karkat's arm and told him to try to resist. When Dirk was satisfied with Karkat's range of comfortable movement and general strength he turned to his knives and selected one. The blade was curved almost double, like a half-moon. It was more a small sickle then a knife and when he passed it over Karkat swung it experimentally.  
“You'll do better with that,” said Dirk flatly, “you don't have the reach to make much use of a long-knife, and you can forget about using a sword without a lot more training first. You will concentrate on learning quick and deadly strikes, you will learn how to disable a man quickly and brutally.”  
“I don't know if I can learn this,” said Karkat with uncertainty, “I'm a slave, I shouldn't be carrying a weapon really.”  
“You're a Rose!” Snapped Dirk, “and when the time comes you'll stab a chancer in the eyes if he looks at you the wrong way, understand?”  
“Y-yes!”  
“Now turn your wrist, watch me. Your blade isn't meant for thrusting but it has a sharp enough edge that you can punch it into a man's guts well enough. Here, watch me-”  
  
Dirk flashed out his arm, his knife flickered through the air like a piece of lightning and Karkat gasped in admiration.  
“How do you move like that?”  
“Practice. I will show you, and you will practice. Every night, for an hour, you hear? And we will train during the days, as well.”  
Karkat turned and twisted his new blade in the air thoughtfully, while Dirk watched him.  
“Dirk?”  
“Yes?”  
“Are we in danger?”  
Dirk straightened up and folded his arms, staring blankly into the fire for a moment.  
“What do you think?”  
“I don't know. I think so.”  
“You're probably right.”  
“You don't have to tell me if you don't want. Dirk.” Karkat used his name quite deliberately.  
“Listen. I have done a lot of bad things, I've cut men down in their dozens and waded through blood. If there were no danger, then there would be no place for a man like me in the employ of this house.”  
Karkat nodded, it was as good and truthful an answer as any.  
“Dirk?”  
“Arm up, keep your elbow close into your side. Yes, Karkat?”  
“Where did you learn all this, about fighting and blades?”  
“Hm. Do you know what the Terpsichorean knights are?”  
“No,”  
“Then my answer would have no meaning to you.”  
“Who are the Terpsichorean knights?”  
Dirk slashed his knife through the air especially savagely, “they were,” he growled, “family.”  
“Were?”  
“Were.”  
Karkat decided to leave it at that, he knew better then to annoy a man with a knife who knew to use it as Dirk did.  
  
They practised together, until the call went out for supper and Dirk put his knives away. He showed Karkat how to tuck his little knife into his belt at the back, where he'd be able to get to it in a flash and it wouldn't show.  
“Keep it with you, always.”  
“Yes, Dirk.”  
“Good lad. The house is a little safer with one more blade, eh?”  
“A little perhaps.”  
“Dirk?”  
“Yes?”  
“Uh. It's nothing.”  
“Something on your mind?”  
“I just... are you a knight?”  
“I was.”  
“Why would you leave your order?”  
“It wasn't exactly by choice. Things happen Karkat, things happen. An argument arose which couldn't be ended except by a duel.”  
“I thought you were always ready for a duel.”  
“Not always,” Dirk sighed, “not with my own brother.”  
  



	12. Chapter 12

Karkat huffed and grumbled his way through the gardens, nestled within a thick, quilted coat against the cold of third season. He had borrowed it from the gardener's stores, and it had been originally been made for a much taller, wider person. He gathered the folds of material tightly around himself, it was better then freezing his limbs off.  
  
The snow was hard-packed, but there was a light dusting of new fall from the night before which lay more lightly over the top, forming a crust that crunched and broke satisfyingly underfoot. He huffed into his hands and rubbed them together. In the cold mornings, the thick metal ring dangling from his collar was always freezing cold, and he wrapped it carefully in rags before going out. He had been sent into the garden to seek out roots and tubers, along with the cones that fell from the trees in the third season and could be made into seasoning, or mulled wine. Chef always insisted on as much as possible coming from the gardens of the Rose House, he felt it was not only economical but prudent, he only trusted ingredients whose providence was known.  
  
The gardens were well-kempt close to the house, but winding routes led further back through high evergreen hedgerows and twisting paves pathways that quickly took the house out of view. A high slope that was crested with a stand of reedy, black looking trees crusted in ice led down to a wide pool, the water itself was iced over. Sometimes the boys from the kitchens came down there at night, and took turns skimming pennies over the icy surface. The noise made was eerie and like nothing else in the world. Karkat had stood with them there once, while they all shared a jug of cider and took turns at it, listening in the gloaming dusk to the springing clatter of the bouncing coins echo and reverberate. Karkat had no coins to try, but Gerod had given him one. That was  shortly before he had died, alone and terrified. Karkat huddled his coat tighter around himself and wondered idly if the warmer times would ever come. Already the season had been colder and longer then was customary.  
  
He walked up to the edge of the water where some likely-looking trees grew, and stooped to gather cones from the ground into a basket. As he worked, he muttered under his breath, as had become his habit. He was not used to expressing himself, but as time went on he was finding it harder and harder to hold back what was inside of him. There were thoughts, and feelings, things not worthy of a mere slave and they kept on demanding to be given full throat. He wasn't even muttering anything in particular, just snatches of words, sentences, things he wished he had said or things that he truly felt.  
  
Beside him, the water was lapping at the bank of the pool, he could hear it splash gently. Karkat suddenly paused, and his breath caught in his throat. He was bent over awkwardly, and he gently set down the cone he had picked up, with infinite care not to make a sound. The water was lapping merrily, but the pool had been iced over for days, thick ice. There should have been no sound from the pool at all. He slipped his hand inside the folds of his coat and clasped the comforting weight of his knife, the wire-wrapped hilt digging into the flesh of his palm so tight did he grasp it. Karkat slowly turned, moving so slowly that he felt his joins creak and rub. He stood and turned to the pool. The ice had been broken- not shattered, but broken away at the bank, and from the sound of water not far from him. Perhaps a bird had settled awkwardly and broken it, or an animal had unwisely stepped out onto the ice. It was always possible- it was the most likely explanation, he told himself, but he had learned to trust his senses and be on his guard when something was out of place around him.  
  
“I'm not afraid,” he called out, his voice crackling slightly, “I'm not frightened of you! I know you're there!”  
The only answer was the wind in the trees shaking the leaves, and beside that the endless lapping of quiet water. He was not put off his guard however, he settled into a crouch, to wait. He pictured in his mind what Dirk would do in this situation, and could only conclude that Dirk would be in control of himself and not shaking like a leaf and in danger of soiling himself.  
“I'm not afraid!” He cried out, “I'm fuh, furious! And I'm a Rose!”  
The trees lowered and raised their branches, drifts of snow dusted across the path. A bird, disturbed, took to wing and flew away. Karkat took a step back, another, and took a deep breath. His knees didn't want to move. He gritted his teeth tightly.  
“I shall run,” he whispered, “I shall turn now, and run away back to the house,” but his knees were not listening, and his legs were jelly.  
  
He saw with dreadful clarity a slender grey arm rise up out of the freezing water through the hole in the ice, and before him a troll emerged from the water just as easily as a man might ascent a flight of steps. It was naked except for loinstraps around its' waist, it shucked freezing water from it's shoulders and flat bare chest without the slightest discomfort. Wide flaring gill-webs spread like wings from the base of it's jaw, pulsing and fluttering in the frigid air. It had long, muscular fingers with thick webs of flesh between them and cruel claws that made a joke of Karkat's own grubby blunt nubs. The troll turned to look directly at Karkat, and raised an arm to point at him. Karkat felt his heart ice over, and he wanted to throw himself to his knees and curl into a submissive ball. He staggered backwards a step, and the water-dweller strode forwards, advancing on him with a predatory grin. Karkat felt twin icy palms clamp down on his jaw as the creature cupped his face in it's hands, and stared down at him balefully.  
“Little fools-friend,” he hissed, “I seek thy death today.”  
Karkat whimpered sorrowfully, but his hand was gripped tightly at his knife and it was free of the scabbard now.  
“I'm a Rose,” he hissed.  
“Then twice-damned are you, fools-friend and Rose,” the troll licked his thin, black lips, “my prince will eat your heart.”  
Karkat shrieked as he felt the claws prick his skin and he realised that he was about to be chocked to death and rendered to pieces by this creature.  
“You should have told him to come get it himself,” Karkat snarled. He had his knife out and slashed the curving edge across the water-dweller's midriff, cutting deeply into muscle and splashing deep purplish blood, almost black, across the snow.  
  
Instantly Karkat was released and on his feet as the troll screamed and felt around his belly, realising what had been done to him. It was a hurtful wound, but the troll was by no means finished by it, and Karkat fled into the gardens.  Hedges flashed by, green flickers in the edges of his vision, as he sprinted. Behind him, he could hear the water-dwelling troll giving chase. The creature took far longer strides then he did, it was sleek and athletic where he was short and weak. Karkat wiped a sleeve carelessly across his eyes to brush away the weeping of raw, sheer fear. The pounding claws of his pursuer made rhythmic cracking thunder through the snow, and Karkat knew he had moments to live. He skidded sideways into the winding way up to the main gardens that formed an apron to the back of the house, desperate to put some corners and turns between himself and the water-dweller, who was by now shrieking out the most dreadful curses and epithets to him.  
  
Karkat moaned hoarsely and drove his aching, burning legs on. He turned through an opening and suddenly he saw a clear run up the neatly-manicured rise to the house. It was the way to safety for him, but at the same time he knew with dread certainty that there was no way that he could run that distance and hope to outpace the creature following him. He dashed out into the open, some fitful cry on his lips mingling with the vengeful roar of the water-dweller. Karkat felt something collide with his back between his shoulder-blades and heard a ripping sound that seemed to carry straight through his body, and suddenly he was tumbling and rolling through gouts of spindrift, sending up clouds of white all around him. There was a splattering of liquid and Karkat realised that by now the troll was so close he could hear that dark blood splash onto the ground and onto him. Close enough to end it, now. He realised that he had nothing to regret- now that he was about to die, he realised that he had at long last lived if only for a little while.  
  
Karkat cracked an eye open, he could see the shadow of the troll stood over him, with arms raised up high in the air ready to deliver a death-strike, right into his neck and chest. His cheek was pressed into the snow, and he could see the Rose House rising up in the distance, a great black mass of stone, his home. Someone was coming, a figure in the distance, but all Karkat could see was a white blur. He realised that he had to be bleeding badly already, for his vision to be fading so.  
  
There was silence, and Karkat twisted his head around. The water-dweller was frozen in place, staring into the distance with a strange look on his face, somewhere between ecstasy and dread. Karkat saw him drop his hands to his sides and take a step back defensively. Beads of ice and frost had formed over his body where the murky waters had clung to him, and Karkat heard him keening lowly in his throat.  
“Oh-h-h my,” the water-dweller moaned, “oh, my Prince of Waves, oh!”  
There was a sound of thunder, but the skies above were clear. It was bootsteps on thick snow. Karkat looked again, and he saw the white figure was closer still, he had never seen anyone run so fast in his life, it was unnatural. He seemed to flicker and waver in the chill air. Karkat caught a flash of shining mail in the light, and he saw the pink of a tabard.  
 _“Terpsichore!”_ A war-cry rent the air and the water-dweller staggered back. _“Terpsich-o-o-ore!”_  
  
Suddenly Dirk was upon them, he crashed into the water-dweller and the two of them span and rolled through the snow. Dirk was first on his feet and when the troll slashed at him with those horrifying claws he swayed at the hip, twisting his chest out of the way easily and thrusting a blade in-between the troll's ribs with a loud sucking sound as the blood wheezed out.  
  
The water-dweller kicked savagely and caught Dirk in the side with a knee, but Dirk clamped his arm down over the grey leg and dug his knife into the troll's thigh. They clutched at each other, rending and pulling. Dirk's mail screeched under the claws and tore in places, and for every cut he took far worse out of his enemy's hide.  
  
The troll struck again and Dirk's knives were up, slashing in a cross through the air to rip away the troll's fingers. Dirk's arms pinwheeled and his blades thudded up under ribs into the troll's chest. Blood exploded from the water-dweller's mouth and coated Dirk's tabard as the creature fell onto it's back. Dirk was atop him immediately and punching his blades down over and over again. He opened the troll up, shattered his ribs and spread them, made a ruin of the troll's heart. Still the water-dweller twitched spasmodically under him, and Dirk planted a knife deep in the troll's throat before finally rolling off his opponent to sprawl in the snow.  
  
Blood came out of the troll in fitful oozing starts, it had no heart left to pump and only the rawness of it's wounds spread the blood out so far. Karkat rolled to his feet with a moan and staggered over to Dirk, who was still laying in the snow.  
“Dirk!”  
Dirk licked his lips and gave out a gasp.  
“Dirk!” Karkat shouted and went to his knees beside the man, “get up, you won!”  
“Boy,” Dirk wheezed, “give me, ah, give me a moment. Just a moment to catch my breath.”  
“Are you hurt,”  
“Hurt, yuh, it hurts, I used to be stronger, I'm sorry.”  
“You saved me Dirk,” Karkat was weeping openly now, and pulled the man's hand up to clasp between his, “you always save me.”  
Dirk chuckled softly, “just paying back a debt, boy. You saved me, in the water-house.”  
Karkat bit his lip, and gently pulled on Dirk's arm, “come, I'll take you back to Rookfeather. Did you open up your wound?”  
“That and more, boy, that and more. It's been too long since I- ah! Since I did that,” Dirk sat up with difficulty, and behind him there was a patch of red on the snow.  
“You're bleeding,”  
“Don't look at it boy, help me up, there's a lad.”  
  
Dirk got up on his feet with a groan. His limbs were shaking, and he felt colder then a human ought to. Karkat got his shoulder up into Dirk's armpit and took his weight with a grunt, and Dirk straightened up. Before them, the body of the dead water-dweller lay broken, destroyed by Dirk's wrathful blades.  
“Look at the blood, boy.”  
“What is it?”  
“See, deep. Almost purple. This fellow must have been close to royalty.”  
“He wanted to kill me.”  
“Mm. Looks like the Prince of the Waves is showing his hand.” Dirk spat. “Take a good look boy, and always remember- they can be beaten. They're mortal, like anyone.”  
“You tore him to pieces.”  
Dirk snorted, “if ever you meet one of those bastards again, you stab them hard and fast, and don't stop till you take the heart, you hear?”  
“Yes, Dirk.”  
“He had a cut in his belly, was that you?”  
“Yes, Dirk.”  
“Next time cut deeper.”  
“Yes,”  
“Come,”  
  
They staggered together toward the house, where already housemen were running to meet them. They were sprinting flat-out, and they were still far distant. Dirk had covered the distance in seconds, and it must have been nearly a furlong. Karkat thought about that. He had never seen someone move so quickly, and he wondered about the mysterious Dirk.  
  
The house was in uproar as they were ushered in. Rookfeather was in good form that morning, barking out orders to the housemen constantly. Every door and window of the lower levels was bolted fast and shuttered as the house was made into a fortress. Until further notice there would only be one portal into the house, and that was through the great front doors of solid iron-banded oak, which were always to be guarded  by armed men. They were officially on a war footing 'till further notice, and he added that crossbowmen were to watch over the expanse of the back garden from the second-story windows. Dirk was manhandled onto a couch in the main drawing room, where the largest fire roared. Lady Rose was already there, she looked pale and drawn, and then when Dirk was brought in she lifted a hand to her lips and stifled a cry. She offered not a word of complaint as Dirk was lowered onto the couch, spilling fine silks and cushions to the floor. Rookfeather called for his gear and then beckoned to Karkat.  
“Here boy, help me get his mail off.”  
“I'm not a child,” Dirk grumbled, “I can manage,”  
“Then stop us, if you're so strong,” Rookfeather snapped, easily manhandling the large man into a sitting position. Karkat got up behind him and tugged at his tabard, pulling it up to work at the bindings on his mail shirt.  
  
The wound in Dirk's side had indeed opened up, and Rookfeather cleaned it carefully before going to work with needle and thread. As he bound Dirk's side up in clean cloths soaked in mustardseed and honey he seemed to grow in cheer.  
“You'll live, once more, Dirk,” he said with a sigh, “it is not so bad as to threaten your life.”  
“I've never seen anyone move like he did,” Karkat's eyes were shining, “he was as fast as lightning!”  
“Oh is that so!” Rookfeather slapped Dirk on the knee, “aren't you a little old for such foolishness?”  
Dirk's lips moved, but his voice was by now a hoarse whisper. The lady Rose stepped closer and placed her own hand on Rookfeather's shoulder.  
“Be peaceful, Rookfeather. Dirk has served us well, and protected one of our own this day.” She nodded at Karkat, who blushed.  
“My lady,” Rookfeather sighed, “he is not injured so much, but exhausted. I've seen what happens to the men of his order who do not have the sense to slow down in time. He is lucky indeed not to have snapped a limb.”  
  
Karkat looked down at Dirk, who was by now fainted away into a deep sleep. Beside them, the lady Rose was a mask of concerned worry, and only Rookfeather remained steadfastly calm.  
“He was a knight, wasn't he?”  
“Did he tell you so boy?” Rookfeather seemed unconcerned.  
“The Terpsichorean knights, yes?”  
“Karkat,” the lady Rose interrupted him, and he looked up guiltily, “you take all our secrets from us, my Karkat, will you truly leave us with nothing?”  
  
Karkat flushed hotly and pulled himself up to his feet, bowing stiffly, “if it please you, mum, I have my duties to be about,”  
The lady Rose reached out, and touched his cheek, “I am very glad you were unharmed, Karkat. You are a part of this House. Please, though, show us some gentleness.”  
Karkat's eyes glistened, and he caught his breath. “I'm sorry, mum. I'll be- I'll be about my work, I'm sorry,”  
  
Karkat dashed out of the room. When he turned away from the others, the back of his coat could be seen clearly and the three slash-marks upon it where claws had torn the surface of the quilted fabric.  
“That boy has the luck of a devil,” Rookfeather remarked.  
“I hope so,” lady Rose murmured, “we have precious little of our own, these days.”  
Rookfeather sighed. “My lady, please do not let this weigh on you. Master Dirk will be well, with a little rest. You must be prepared for the coming conclave.”  
“How can I attend, without Dirk by my side?”  
“How can you not? The Peonies will be there, watching, and certainly the Amaranths will be looking for an excuse to declare against us.”  
“Will you be with me, Rookfeather?”  
“Need you ask? Where you are, so there I am, my lady.”  
“I want to bring Karkat as well.”  
“A troll slave? To conclave?”  
“Is it unknown?”  
Rookfeather thought about this carefully, “it is not unknown. It is... odd.”  
“Then it is decided. He will bring his luck with him.”  
“As my lady says.”  
  
The lady Rose turned away and went to the fire, to warm her hands. As she stared into the flames she spoke.  
“Rookfeather. Do you ever question my decisions?”  
“Of course. How better to serve you then by making you consider all your options?”  
“Do you feel that I am making... a mistake, in the path I set?”  
Rookfeather clucked his tongue, and pulled himself to his feet with a grunt. “My lady,” he said slowly, “I think that you are making a terrible mistake.”  
“Will you stay with me?”  
“Where you are, so there I am, my lady. Unto death.”  
  



	13. Chapter 13

The dying second season made the windows rattle and the chimney-flues whistle with cold breezes. The Rose house hunkered down and made itself small and black like a great fist of granite amid a blanket of white. Karkat woke in his room, and looked around him. When he had been purchased, and this room had been made his, he had been given a rough blanket and made the best of the situation. Now that the deep cold of third season was waning, he found the blanket to be more a luxury then a necessity. He did not need the constant feel of fabric against his skin as the humans seemed to. The air was bitter, and cold, but it bore the promise of better days to come at last.

Karkat rolled onto his side in bed and reached over for his inkwell. He plucked the little wooden item from his rough-hewn table that stood by his bed and turned it this way and that in the light. This was what he had won from his lady instead of his freedom. She would have granted it without a second thought had he asked, but instead he had taken this prize. He had no idea why it had called to him so, nor why he still listened to the inner-voice that still raged and demanded from time to time. That voice had got him into various shades of trouble but had never, to his mind, improved his sorry lot in life overmuch.

The thing was not much to look at. Just a little wooden jar, with a tiny brass hinge holding a crudely carved wooden stopper in place. Inside was just black, if there was any ink remaining in the well then it was nothing more then a dab of moisture at the bottom of the inkwell. Karkat had held it up to a candle, trying to deduce the contents of the inkwell, to no avail. He had been half expected to see the tell-tale gleam of a hidden diamond or other similarly romantic thing, but there was just blank blackness inside the inkwell. It was, in every way that he could think of testing, just a cheap, carved wooden pot used to store ink. No more, no less. For this, he had reflected repeatedly, he had given up a sure and certain chance of freedom. On the other hand, he was a Rose. That bore repeating, and he would say it under his breath in the night when he huddled in his bed and tried not to think of the horrifying ghostly images contained in the many paintings hanging in the halls and galleries outside his door.

The chill of second season had passed, and the promise of a better, warmer season could be tasted in the air. As the season drew to a close, the time of the Conclave of Houses approached. Karkat learned about this for the first time when Rookfeather summoned him for a new kind of lesson. Karkat had learned how to bow properly, and how to say please and thank-you, how to address humans of every conceivable social stature, but now he had to learn about the annual Conclave. On the first day of the third season, when the year slowly drew to a close and the new year beckoned, the Conclave would meet for the first time. At that meeting the great families would decide between them the important matters of state and politics that would define the coming seasons. In years past the cold of the second season had kept the ancient farming families locked tight in their countryside dwellings, and the wet first season had been vital time for farming. For this reason all matters of important business had to be conducted and concluded in the third season. Even though the humans were no longer so strictly bound to the agrarian rhythms of their ancestors, the practice still remained and first Conclave was the most important political time of the year. All of this Karkat learned in his lessons, until he felt that he was better versed in human history and customs then most humans.  
“But Master, why do I need to know all of this?”  
Karkat interrogated Rookfeather, who looked up with a weary sigh from the tome he had been narrating to his truculent charge.  
“Am I boring you, boy?”  
“No,” said Karkat warily, “but these are human words and human matters, why do I need to know about them?”  
“You're a Rose, boy, and human or not the business of the Roses is your business. Do I make myself clear to you?”  
“Yes, Master,”  
“No more foolishness. You are here to learn.”  
“Yes, Master,”  
“Now then. You understand the purpose of the Conclave?”  
Karkat closed his eyes and recited. “The Conclave will meet in the great council hall to hear all grievances and settle matters by common vote where such matters concern the great families. The Conclave will settle by qualified majority all matters brought to Conclave surrounding the trade concerns and business matters of the great families,”  
“And what is a qualified majority?”  
“Two-thirds of votes cast must be in favour of a motion for the motion to pass.”  
“That is correct. As no one house has two-thirds of the vote share this makes allegiances and power-brokering all the more important. No one house can have a motion passed without the assistance of at least one other house.”

Karkat thought about this. Rookfeather watched him, he liked to observe the boy thinking. Karkat would mutter under his breath softly as his thoughts ran round and around.  
“How many votes does the Rose House cast, Master?”  
“Thirty.”  
“And the Peony House?”  
“One hundred and twelve. And the Amaranths another hundred on top. Those two are dangerously close to controlling Conclave.”  
“I see. But Master, who gives out the votes?”  
“That is decided by counting up the business interests of the various houses. Those who control more of the trade within the city gain a greater say in trade matters. The thinking is that to the most successful House goes the right to determine the proper trading environment.”  
“I see,” Karkat was frowning, and Rookfeather smiled indulgently.  
“Now we are crossing matters that are of little concern. Leave me to worry about our business holdings- on with your lesson. Recite to me the first law of council.”  
Karkat sighed and concentrated. “The council shall compose of the great houses and those houses shall abide by the decisions of the council in all things.”  
“Good. Let us move on to the second, third and fourth laws.”  
“Yes, Master.”  
The lesson went on.

Karkat leaned over his books and screwed up his eyes in concentration. Across the desk from him sat the little wooden inkwell, looking as harmless and simple as ever. From time to time Karkat glared at it.

Where the river entered the city, the floes of second season ice had left soft white mounds of ice that drifted in the waters to be nudged aside by the barges and watercraft that constantly came into the city. Here the rive was wide and vigorous, and named Five Children. The city opened up wide stone mouths in her great walls to permit the river entry and the ships made their way in the hope of finding good trade as the year turned. Three ships that flew the Peony pennant, single masted sloops, were drawn by little pilot craft through the deep places in the river and toward the docks. The pilotmen of the docks were brawny and still, they shipped their oars and pulled their charges heartily until they were safely in port. These men knew the waters as well as they knew their old turndown boots and pilot-cloth breeks. The morning mists were warming nicely in the strengthening sun, and the three sloops drifted silently through a roiling mist-bank toward the great stone jetties awaiting them. One of the pilotmen stood up at the bow of his longboat and lifted a calloused hand to his cheek to hail the shore.  
“Ho-o-oy! Hoy the sho-o-ore!”  
“Ship it in, boy!” Came the answering holler, “break her wide and set her tup on the pin!”  
The pilotman nodded and gave a wave to the captain of the sloop. The order had come to begin the manuevre to turn and nudge the vessel in till her narrow side nestled gently against the jetty. The captain nodded and yelled to his bo'sun.  
“Hoy there, ship jib and hoik up the main!”  
“Ahh!”  
“Heave-to, master shipwright! Haul out the gangplank and make her fast!”  
“Ahh!”

Fifteen men of the Peony sloop, she was named John O' Shaftentyne, scuttled about, hauling and hoiking, binding and coiling, making her good and ready for the shore. The shipwright pulled up the long heavy gangplank and made its' end fast in the receiving notch on the side, ready to drop it against the jetty. Longshoremen in the employ of the Peony house were already gathering along the stone pathway above the revetments that stopped the jetty from being washed away by the relentless river. The gang boss yelled out to his mates on the ship.  
“Hoy, the John-O!”  
“Hoy there, ho-way th' boys!” The captain yelled back.  
“How is it wi' ye?”  
“Good winds and calm waters, we'll sup up in the Matty Tun later together if ye have a penny for your beer!”  
“Aye that an' more!”  
The men laughed as the John O' Shaftentyne drifted closer and closer to her berth, and behind her the other two sloops made formidable shadows in the mist as they came up. The men of the 'John-O' had a tradition of starting their shore leave at the Matty Tun pub, and were known to be hearty drinkers and easy to share a pint with. More then that, their captain was a generous man when the pay came in, and was known to get a drink or two for a thirsty longshoreman.

The waters of Five Children lapped against the wooden flanks of the John O' Shaftentyne as she calmly drifted into position in her berth. The calls of the Longshoremen and the crew back to them roused up a counterpoint to the screaming of the gulls. The traditional chants and calls back and forth as the ship was made fast had been handed down through generations, and the men knew what to do without being told.

The air was rent by a piercing cry, a sound that had no place on the docks where honest men toiled. The deck creaked under a ferocious impact as a black shape, a silhouette roughly man-shaped except for the twisting horns rising from a jagged black mane of hair, seemed to emerge directly from the mist to land aboard the sloop. He wore a porcelain-white mask with slit-eyes and a jagged line of crudely inked black teeth scrawled in the impression of a grin. The mad, impossible figure threw back his head and gave out another piercing cry, a raw full-throated bellow of mad joy. A crewman went for him with a belaying pin, and the black-clad fool punched him neatly to the deck timbers. More of them came, gangling cackling figures in the garb of fools, swarming out of the mists and onto the Peony ships. In moments they were all aflame, and the stone jetty was washed in human blood.

Lord Gamsie himself slipped free his whiteface mask and surveyed the work that the black parliament had done. He reached down and hauled up a feebly struggling sailor by the lapels of his coat, examining the man with a strangely detached curiosity for a moment before shrugging mildly and tossing him overboard. It had taken the black parliament no time at all to make their assault, and they would melt back into the mist before any organised help could come. They would go unremarked upon and unrecognised, for no one ever knew the face of a fool. Who could say anything, except that the fools were the ones who did it? Gamsie would of course hear various complaints from the Longshoremen's guild, the merchants, and no doubt the Peony House. He didn't care, he enjoyed helping his friends.

The news reached Rookfeather while he was bent over an ancient ledger, scribbling neatly with his black quill. He had been waiting for word, and showed no surprise when he was told that three ships under the Peony pennant had been burned and sunk with their cargoes. He reached for a new sheet of paper and started making some calculations. By his best guess the Peony house had lost enough economic power to cost them forty votes in the Conclave. It was not quite enough to break their power yet, but it was certainly a start. Whatever plans the Peonies might have had to dominate this year's Conclave unopposed were certainly now spoiled. Rookfeather permitted himself a tiny, wry smile. He could not bring himself to quite approve of alliance with the black parliament of fools, but he bore the Peonies no love and their pain was a small succour to him after a long, cold season.

Dirk was in his fighting mail and tabard when Karkat came to him. The man was nearly well again, but he still favoured his injured side when he fought and he was not yet as strong as he was before. Still, he insisted on continuing Karkat's lessons and sparring regularly. Karkat nodded to him respectfully and they made their way to the middle of the Long Gallery, which had become their unofficial sparring ground. The wide fireplace was always kept glowing with a few logs, come warm weather or cold, and the room suited their activity.

“Are you ready, boy?”  
“Yes, Dirk,”  
“Have you been practising your forms?”  
“I have,”  
“Good. I want to see you up on your toes more, today. A little more work, and you'll be quite the nimble fighter.”  
“I still don't want to fight anyone,”  
“I see. Well, the next time the Prince of Waves sends his assassins, do be sure to tell them so.”

Karkat winced. He remembered a spreading pool of purplish blood freezing into the snow. Dirk didn't seem to be bothered by anything, but try as he might Karkat could not extinguish the look of shock in the face of the dying troll. He had seen violence in his life of course, and had been on the receiving end of plenty when he had been lashed and beaten to encourage him to work harder, but this was different. Even when Gerod had died, he had not had to witness the event itself and watch the kitchen boy's eyes glaze over. The dead troll in the garden had been very different indeed. Dirk saw that his concentration was wandering and snapped his fingers irritably.  
“Boy! The next time you start dreaming I'll wake you with a neat little cut or two, how is that?”  
“I'm sorry Master!”  
“Call me Dirk, damn your eyes!”  
“Dirk! Sorry!”  
“Better. Now defend yourself boy. Fight or die!”

They fought, back and forth across the length of the Long Gallery, until the time came to begin preparing the dinner and Karkat had to attend to his kitchen chores. Dirk just nodded and instructed him on the specific forms to practise in the evening. Karkat bowed, and Dirk mirrored the motion. Then they parted, and Karkat sheathed his curved little knife at his belt. He knew how much a sign of trust it was for a slave, and especially a troll slave, to go about the house carrying a weapon and he had not taken that trust lightly. His knife was lashed to his left just under his belly, where he could have it out and into a fighting stance in an instant. He did not want to fight anyone, and he could not forget his horror at the sight of death, but when the time came to fight or to die he intended not to die.


	14. Chapter 14

The great houses met at the dying of the second season for the first great Conclave of the year, as they had done for fully three hundred and more years past. The weather was already turning and the white rains of the second season were past. As the days lengthened and the light ran to gold and umber in the afternoons, the plans of the great houses turned toward the coming seasons of harvest and plenty. Before all that, though, came the Conclave where the various rights and licenses that formed a web of commerce between them would be hammered out. The houses that controlled the water traffic would look to get the best rates possible for transporting goods, and the houses of the plains to the South would try to gain the best deal to bring their produce into the markets and shops of the city. Trade houses and guild houses would argue and bicker over the rights to operate in various markets, and for the smaller houses even a matter of which hawkers would be permitted to cry their wares on a particular street-corner would be matters of grave importance. All of this would be addressed in the Conclave, and by the time the meetings broke the economic shape of the coming year would be known to all.

The Rose House was still, nominally, one of the Great Houses and so could claim seats and voting rights in the council that would have the final arbitrating word on any dispute that could not be resolved with an amicable deal. However, though the Roses could claim a grand history their state was more severely diminished then at any time before. The Amaranths would arrive at the head of a retinue of bodyguards, footmen and retainers all dressed in matching well-fitted leathers and each with a sprig of amaranth bloom in a buttonhole. The Peonies in dark green coats with blazes of lighter grass-green at collar and cuff would be similarly well appointed. The representatives of the Lilac house in their customary blue and heliotrope cloaks would enter grandly and make fine pronouncements. The Bilberry house would bring samples of their wines and make a point of offering fine gifts to the other representatives. They always tried to remain well-liked by all parties, and in doing made themselves merely tolerable to all. The hall itself was one of the largest single buildings in the city and dominated the high avenue that led to the human quarter from the upper market. The hulking edifice had once been a corn market, where a massive trading floor had been used to buy and sell all manner of farmed goods. Then after a fire the trading floor was relocated to a newer building that was nearer to the docks. The Rose House had been instrumental in rebuilding the old trading hall into the grand building that now occupied the site, and it had been designated the meeting place for the council if great houses in Conclave. That had been centuries ago, and now the only evidence of the vast opulence that the Roses had brought to the reconstruction was the occasional carved rose flower in the dark wooden panelling that lined the rooms.

Karkat shifted uncomfortably and tugged at his frilled lace collar where it spilled over the beautiful orange coat that Dirk had given him. His unruly hair had been firmly tamed and slicked down with oil, and he had been scrubbed and soaped to within an inch of his life. For all the preparation, training and memorising that he had been forced to endure in order to take his place in the great hall, the day itself had actually consisted so far of marching into a darkened room with Rookfeather and simply waiting in silence while important things happened elsewhere. The waiting room was barely large enough to accommodate a table at which Rookfeather sat, poring over a ledger attentively. There was only a single slot window with leaded glass that let in a low, constant draught. In the cold seasons, Karkat reflected, this would have been a miserable little place. From outside came a low murmur of voices as various bargains and deals were hammered out by the lower houses. They would spend all morning going back and forth over the large marble-tiled floor and the attending corridors. They would form small groups, break apart and form newer groups, all jockeying for competitive advantage and the best deals.

Karkat tried to sit down again on the stool that had been provided for him and once again gave up on the idea. The stool was bitterly uncomfortable and not worth the splinters. As he stood up again ruefully, Karkat reflected that it had been just over a year since he had been purchased. There had been a time where even so meagre and rough a seat as this would have been something of a luxury. A time when he would have gratefully accepted the slightest accommodation as more then he deserved. And now? Karkat frowned and tugged at his lip. Underneath his clothing there was still the snug warmth of a slave collar around his neck. He just didn't look quite as though it suited him any more.

“Master?”  
Rookfeather carefully placed a bony index finger on the page to mark the place he had been reading, “yes, boy?”  
“I don't mean to speak out of turn,” Karkat started, “but why are we here?”  
“The Conclave?”  
“This room.”  
“Ahh, yes. Tell me boy, do you think you are ready to learn one of the greatest secrets of the Conclave?”  
Karkat perked up at that, and nodded eagerly. Rookfeather just smiled at him wryly.  
“Most of it is just sitting in a room and waiting.”  
“Master?”  
“The lesser Houses are having their time, now. It would not be seemly for the Rose House, as a Great House, to be seen yet. When the council proper sits for business, we will then emerge and take our appointed places quietly and with dignity.”  
“But why wait? Why not just come to the Conclave when it is time for the council to sit?”  
“Because that would be vulgar, Karkat. We must not seem to be ignoring the smaller Houses. No, we wait, and keep to ourselves. And then, when the council meets, the representatives of the Great Houses will make a show of how busy they have been amongst themselves all day in preparation for the council.”  
Karkat frowned, “it sounds like it is all just a show.”  
“Indeed it is, boy. Or at least mostly. The point of the Conclave is not just to make decisions, you know, but to be seen as the decision makers.”

Karkat thought back to lord Gamsie and his many faces. At least Gamsie made a point of showing off his coloured face plainly, but humans wore their masks on the inside and made doubly sure to hide as much from themselves as each other.

“I understand,” he said gravely. Rookfeather gave him a slightly discomfited glance and got back to his reading. The two of them waited in silence for the business of the morning to be completed. There was only the occasional sound of Rookfeather patiently making a neat little inscription into the ledger with a quill, or muttering under his breath as he calculated a point of arithmetic.

One of the Rose House footmen had been casually patrolling the corridor outside, and as the time came for the councillors to take their place in Conclave he tapped on the door respectfully and informed them. Rookfeather got to his feet with a grunt and closed the ledger, sealing the book shut with a leather cord that he wound carefully into a knot. He nodded to Karkat, and the two of them made their way to the hall. Karkat subconsciously felt for the dagger nestling under his belly beneath his doublet, the comforting weight of it made him feel a little less insecure in the unfamiliar surroundings.

Karkat himself was the source of some comment and consternation. To bring a troll slave into the hall for Conclave was, to put not too fine a point on it, an oddity. The trading floor itself had been cleared as the time for the council to gather approached, and three great black oaken tables had been hauled in and formed into a semicircle. Around the outside edge of the semicircle, great wooden chairs with high backs bore the council members of the various great houses. Each councillor represented the combined voting block of their house, and each had a single adjutant at their left hand side. Behind the tables, various footmen and retainers bustled in groups, ready to provide immediate assistance or see to the needs of their councillor. As Karkat came into the hall he saw that the lady Rose was already seated, with Dirk stood prominently behind her and a place at her side waiting for Rookfeather. The whole affair seemed far less formal then he had been led to imagine that it would be. In fact, the councillors made a point of showing a certain detached disdain for the proceedings. As he looked around Karkat realised that they were all making a great performance of how little the event mattered to them, whilst at the same time displaying as much opulence and casual wealth to the other councillors as possible. He had always viewed lady Rose as a kind of remote, almost divine figure of absolute power and respect within the Rose House but here, surrounded by members of the other great houses, she looked somehow small and vulnerable. She did not have the massed retainers or the obvious shows of wealth and power that the others did. The lady Rose merely sat in a pose of quiet dignity with her hands delicately held together before her on the table.

She wore a simple gown with a light cloak about her shoulders edged in lace with little pink rose petals in embroidered silk here and there. The hall was lit by a light well set in the domed ceiling, a glassed-over opening that admitted a central column of light to enhance the candles and lamps around the walls, and dramatic spear of afternoon sunlight made her hair into a burning halo around her face. Behind her, Dirk was looking around uneasily, and though he was not being obvious about it, Karkat could tell that he was paying considerable attention to the Peonies. For their part, the Peony delegation were self-contained and quiet, huddled around their lord, a stern figure in a frock coat of green felt with a damask pattern in subtle complementary shades. Lord Peony was known to be a hard man, strong and fierce if in a formal, polite way. The Peonies had a grip on the waterways that dwarfed the small fleets of the other houses, notwithstanding the recent loss of a sloop to a fire. Beside him was Jade, the elder child and favoured daughter of the Peony House who acted as chief adjutant and behind her, somewhat hidden by gloom and silhouetted by candlelight from behind, stood the younger son who was the enforcer of the Peony House and their chief blade. Although all of the Peonies wore matching, form-hugging coats the younger son had noticeable lumps on either hip of matched knife scabbards. If there was a particular animosity between the Roses and the Peonies, which would be an understatement, then the animus that existed between Dirk of the Roses and Jacob of the Peonies was the embodiment of the feud.

As Karkat made his way carefully around behind the council with Rookfeather he glanced over and he caught a glimpse of something he didn't quite understand. Jacob Peony was looking directly at Dirk with an unreadable expression and he casually reached up and patted his side just over his hip, meaningfully. It was the spot where Dirk had been wounded when Karkat found him in the water house. Dirk just stared back at him and did not move a muscle. What was left unsaid between the two men hung between them and bound them together.

Rookfeather took his place beside his lady and said a few words into her ear, but otherwise remained suitably stony and quiet. When the old man wanted to, he could put on a ferocious mien. The lady Rose only acknowledged him with a curt nod, before turning her attention to the council. Karkat was stood behind her with Dirk and the few Roses they had with them, giving him a perfect view of the proceedings as the Conclave began.

The major business that the first sitting of the Conclave was the small matter of working out who the real power-players were to be. The houses made a formal accounting of their holdings and business interests, and according to arcane and inscrutable calculations carried out by an entire team of accountants the voting rights were apportioned out. This would have been the year that the Peonies finally achieved their long-held goal of a controlling number of votes in the council, but with the burning of the John O' Shaftentyne that was not to be. No matter how the Peonies objected or the numbers were recounted there was no way around the eventual truth that the Peonies could not alone control the Conclave. If this angered the lord Peony he didn't show it. The man enjoyed a simple wooden pipe as an affectation and he filled it with spiced and fragrant tobacco as the votes were apportioned out to the great houses. His daughter was more obviously perturbed but the lord did not allow her to speak out on the matter, silencing his restless children with a calm, raised hand. He beckoned, and Jacob Peony leaned over to listen as his father whispered a few words. The younger man just nodded and stepped back, obviously quiescent.

Once the votes were allotted the make-up of the council was clear. Between them the Peonies and the Amaranths had more then enough votes to dominate, however there was a traditional tension between the farmers of the Amaranths and the sailors of the Peonies. They had a symbiotic relationship but one which was fraught with constant one-upmanship and competition. Where their interests aligned the Peonies and Amaranths could be expected to vote as one- but their interests did not always align.

Following this initial round of discussion and allocation there was a brief recess for refreshment. Karkat dutifully went to fetch watered-wine and soft bread for the Roses, and served them to his lady. She had not yet spoken out except to confirm what was needed or to play her part in the prescribed ritual. When she took a glass of wine from Karkat she just favoured him with a thin, sad little smile. Karkat was suddenly and painfully aware of the meagre offering he could give to his lady, in comparison to the other houses who's lords and ladies were waited upon by liveried attendants bearing a variety of expensive trifles. His doublet felt awkward and ill-suited, and he was very aware of the slave collar tugging at his throat. Rookfeather appeared to notice his growing discomfort. He stood and turned to Karkat, taking wine from his serving tray and put a hand on his shoulder.  
“Are you well, boy? You look a little pale.”  
“I wasn't expecting it to be like this, Master.”  
“How so?”  
“Everything is so...” Karkat struggled to find appropriate words, “everyone is hiding things, no one is saying what they really think.”  
“Of course, that is the nature of Conclave.”  
“I feel like everyone is watching us,”  
“I imagine they might be. The fate of the Rose House is the subject of some discussion and gossip, I believe. More then one of the great houses have their eyes on our remaining territory. They are waiting to see what happens.”  
“What are we going to do?”  
“Watch, learn, make our plans. What we have always done. Keep your wits about you boy, the afternoon session will begin soon.”

They were approached by Dirk, hovering close and speaking in a low whisper.  
“Is something the matter?”  
“No,” said Rookfeather, “one's first Conclave is a difficult thing, that is all.”  
Dirk glanced down at Karkat, “show no weakness. If you don't know what to do, then just stand still and look like you're thinking about something important.”  
Karkat grimaced wryly, “will that fool the Peonies?”  
“No,” Dirk sourly countered. “Come, they are starting again.”

Rookfeather took his seat by his lady, and the discussions began again in earnest. On a whim Karkat looked across to where the Peonies sat, and to his surprise he saw that Jacob Peony was looking directly at him, and seemed as though he had been for some time.


	15. Chapter 15

The council's deliberations were labyrinthine at the best of times, and in this year there was an extra tension in the air, with the weakness of the Rose House. The other great houses knew an opportunity was coming, and they knew that the other houses were all thinking the same thing. The councillors were all waiting for some slight indication or sign that any of their number would make a power-play toward the Rose House. Should one of the houses, even in the diminished state of the Rose House, fall then a small but significant number of council votes would be available to be redistributed and that fact alone could potentially change the form of the alliances and bargains that currently balanced the various interests within the council.

When he had come to this place, there merely to act as some small ornament to his house, Karkat had assumed the worst from the beginning. They truly were surrounded by enemies, and even the Black Parliament had not been so noxiously oppressive. However, as the Conclave proceeded he noticed something new. He was starting to develop a subtle sense for the ways of humans, he noticed. He had always been content to spend his time observing others, watching the world go by and he had lived by his ability to know when was the time to stay and when to flee. Now, after a year of such changes as he had seen in his world and in himself, he was starting to realise the extent to which he had grown. He could practically see the lines of dependency and hatred between the humans, stretching between them like rays and as clear to him now as were sunbeams shining between parted curtains. People, both trolls and humans, had always been something of a mystery but he now saw that the mystery was itself an illusion- underneath the posturing, the bragging, the intimidating postures and cautiously applied layers of braggadocio they were simple creatures, really. He saw past the deals and the arguments to their core- people had basic needs and desires, and once those desires were understood, all the schemes and secrets made sense.

Karkat realised with a start that lady Rose knew exactly what was happening around her. Far from being a weak and diminished figure, he now saw that she was the centre of a carefully cultivated web of influences and suggestion. She offered no deals, she spoke rarely, but when she raised her delicate voice to offer a shy, quavering opinion it was always put in just such a way as to sow a certain kind of discord in one quarter, or to nudge one house against another. Karkat was growing impressed by her performance; lady Rose was taking nothing and turning it into something. Little by little as the day progressed, and without any readily apparent effort, the key issues of this Conclave all touched, in some way, on the Rose House.

The Amaranths needed to organise the shipping of the coming harvest into the city, which led them into a deal with the Peonies- all except for the small matter of a single long, looping bend in the river Standeasy where it led into the city, a bend which could now be avoided by running goods by barge across a newly cut canal that linked the beginning and the end of the bend and cut the need to traverse the bend entirely. Goods could be trans-shipped onto barges that could make the journey up the canal and thence into the city, and cut the travel time by a full half-day- and it so happened that the lock cottage at the terminal end of the canal, a vital stop on the journey, was property of the Rose House. The lady Rose graciously offered the Amaranths passage for their goods through the canal, for a small fee that was slight enough to be irrelevant. Suddenly, the Amaranth House had an interest in maintaining an ongoing relationship with the Rose House.

The Bilberry House was furious at the thought of Amaranth goods arriving in a more timely fashion to the marketplaces of the city then their own. Sighing at her own foolish oversight, the lady Rose offered the use of two wine shops on All-Stone Street to the Bilberries exclusively, an offer which would increase the market share of Bilberry House wine considerably on a street that was known to be frequented by buyers from several very lucrative, and prestigious, restaurants. The lady Rose asked only for a meagre percentage of the profit. Suddenly, the Bilberry House was feeling rather more sanguine about the proceedings, and the rotund and florid-cheeked lord Bilberry privately congratulated himself on his cunning and acumen. Of course, now the Bilberry House was very interested in maintaining their partnership with the Rose House.

The Lilac House found itself bound up with the Roses in a deal to share access to the lucrative Silk Quarter of the upper market when it turned out that the a key alleyway used by the barrow-boys to transport bolts of material from the warehouses near the dock to the street of clothiers had fallen into Rose House control recently. The gain to the Roses was not significant in any way except that it made the Rose House suddenly useful to the Lilacs.

Karkat watched over all of this, and ran to fetch water, or ink, or extra sheaves of paper and wax for Rookfeather who was keeping a record of all that transpired. Karkat passed a new handful of papers to the old man, and noted with surprise that Rookfeather's hand was trembling slightly as he took them. He glanced up briefly, and paled. He had never seen Rookfeather look so perturbed before. Karkat touched his sleeve respectfully and leaned over to whisper.  
“Master? Are you well?”  
Rookfeather seemed not to hear him. The old man scribbled away with his quill, and Karkat was his jaw working silently as though he were choking back the words he wanted to mutter constantly. Now Karkat was concerned and he went to fetch a little brandy and water , returning with a glass that he pushed into Rookfeather's hand. The man sipped without thinking, and the warming liquor seemed to bring him a little back to full wakefulness. He nodded in thanks and absently patted Karkat on the head before getting back to recording carefully the events of the Conclave. He intercepted the questions Karkat wanted to hiss to him with a brusque shake of his head.  
“Not here, go on boy.”

The day stretched off into afternoon and finally the early evening, and with the tolling of an iron bell in a distant turret of the hall the Conclave was brought to a close for the day. The councillors all made a point of recording the point that their deliberations had reached, bowed respectfully to one another, and in quiet dignity made their way out of the hall. It was considered the height of irregularity to discuss any Conclave matters as a council outside of the allotted time and so there was complete silence as the hall emptied. The lady Rose made no attempt to rush, gliding from her seat to the back of the hall like a gliding ghost. Karkat was left to help Rookfeather to his feet and gather up the old man's papers and inks, and as they left with the rest of the attendants Karkat felt Rookfeather leaning on him with unusual heaviness. He signalled to Dirk with a nod, and they all left together shortly along with their lady.

When their party had left the great hall and had made their way along one of the corridors that filled up the hall, and left behind the bustle and crowds of the Conclave, the lady Rose at last seemed to relax and let slip the porcelain-like calm expression she had worn the entire day. She sighed and loosened the lace at her throat, moving to sit down at one of the wooden benches that lined the corridors and walkways. The air was thick and heavy with the smell of old books and grain, and the darkening lead-glass windows that occasionally dotted the walls let in only a vague glow of the evening. In the gloom, Karkat helped Rookfeather to a seat while Dirk stood by pensively.  
“We shouldn't tarry here,” Dirk announced, “it isn't good for us to be seen.”  
“Calm, Dirk,” the lady Rose replied, “we will be safe enough for now, until nightfall.”  
At once Rookfeather spoke up, and his voice had an unusual acid edge to it.  
“You know that, do you my lady?”  
Lady Rose looked askance at him, her expression amused but otherwise unreadable, “Rookfeather? What do you mean?”  
“I mean do you know we are safe, or do you know.”  
The emphasis he put on the last word was unmistakeable and enigmatic, and spoke to something shared in their past.  
“I'm sure I don't appreciate your meaning.”  
“It's all happening again. The mysterious benefits, the deals,” Rookfeather slapped his knuckles over the stack of papers Karkat held with a surprising suddenness that made the troll twitch.  
“Do you think that the other houses will not see the same thing? How mysteriously the Rose House was at the middle of everything today! What will come of it when they have a little time to think and put it all together, my Lady?”  
“Rookfeather! You are tired, it is not proper for you to be speaking of such things,”  
“Someone must, my Lady! Before we are all dragged back into the-” Rookfeather stopped himself, taking in a great gasp of air, “please, my Lady, I urge you to consider your course.”  
The lady Rose just smiled at him. She stood and approached, laying a hand on his lined and wrinkled cheek, “dear, dear Rookfeather. You have always been so good and clever a servant.”  
Rookfeather looked up at her in silence.  
“Serve me now,” the lady said, “just follow me a little longer and you will see. That is all that I ask.”

Rookfeather looked more tired then Karkat had ever seen him. There was a sort of trembling that went through him, his head would bob slightly as though he were nodding at everything he heard or said, and his hands were florid with purpled knuckles. Unbidden, Karkat put down his papers and approached, gently rubbing his hand over Rookfeather's back.  
“I'll fall you always my lady,” Rookfeather whispered, “but please, don't lead us all back there.”  
“Everything will come right, I promise. I promise that to you all.”

Dirk put a hand under Rookfeather's arm and helped him.  
“Come along, we need to be on our way it will be dark soon. Karkat- the papers.”  
Karkat nodded and gathered them up, trotting along behind as the party left the hall.

The great hall was a brooding mass of stone and wood hulking over the road which led into the market, but the buildings around it were newer and made of smooth sandstone blocks that illuminated easily in the light from various street lamps and torches. The high sandstone walls made a brilliant yellowish backdrop that was picked up by the flagstones on the ground that were worn down by thousands of feet. There were few pedestrians around, and the darkening evening was filled with a warming breeze that hinted of the coming warm season.

Most of the councillors were already gone, in their various coaches and carriages. The members of the Rose House had no such recourse to fine transportation. There was a grand carriage on the hands of the house, along with two smaller carts, but the days when the Rose House could provide a stable of horses to draw them had passed. Fortunately the central location of the hall made it a centre of traffic and Dirk simply stepped up to the road side and hailed down a passing carriage. He helped up the lady Rose and then Rookfeather, when a call from behind them made him turn.

A little way down the street a darkly silhouetted figure pushed away from where it had leaned on an iron rail and sauntered over. The rich, warmly glowing surrounds only made his green topcoat seem blacker, and his hips swayed with the burden of daggers strapped to his belt. Karkat immediately recognised the Peony man who had been watching Dirk so intently. He glanced back into the carriage, and saw that the lady Rose was watching with a drawn, pale expression.  
“Dirk,” she called out softly, “I believe that we were leaving now.”  
“Look,” sighted Rookfeather quietly, “it is nightfall.”

Dirk patted Karkat on the shoulder, and walked forth to meet the Peony. The two of them warily approached one another, and Karkat swallowed heavily and felt for his dagger again.  
“Dirk.”  
“Jacob.”  
“Was our business with one another finished? I do forget.”  
“I believe it was not finished, now that you mention it.”  
“Yes, I thought so too.”

They stopped and faced one another. From behind them the lady Rose hissed Dirk's name again but, this time, he ignored her. The coachman looked on uneasily and coughed discreetly under his breath.  
“Well,” he said, “we'll be off then. Where to?”  
Karkat made to enter the coach, but he couldn't bring himself to. He had his foot on the iron step leading up and hesitated. He looked up at lady Rose pleadingly.  
“Dirk! Come along, now!” The lady called to him more plaintively.

Jacob Peony nodded toward the carriage.  
“Your lady calls for you, Dirk.”  
“Looking for an easy way out? I'll leave if you ask me to.”  
Jacob flushed angrily at that. He unbuttoned his coat and threw back the tails arrogantly, exposing the twin scabbards at his hips. In answer, Dirk just licked his lip and slowly lowered his hands to his sides, the fingers twitching slightly.

“I'm not having this,” the coachman muttered fearfully, “I'll not be a part of this, I tell thee now!”

Jacob slipped free his daggers, two lethal blades with well worked brass crossguards. The spine of each blade was enamelled with a line of grass-green. He reversed the blade in his left hand with an expert flick of the wrist, holding it projecting downwards from his fist, and with the right he indicated Dirk.  
“On the contrary sir, I beg you do stay and address a grave matter between us.”  
Dirk nodded and then looked back over his shoulder.  
“Karkat, I want you to get into the carriage and see our lady safely home, you hear?”  
For his part, Karkat stared up at lady Rose pleadingly, “please, my lady, I can't leave him!”  
“Will you be any help to him, Karkat? With your little knife?”  
“I- please-”  
At that, the coachman had seen more then enough. He cracked his whip suddenly and the coach shuddered.  
“Get in or not, troll! I'm off!”  
Karkat gritted his teeth, and slapped shut the door, leaping down from the coach. “To the Rose House, you go now!”  
“Ay!”  
Whatever lady Rose's answer had been was lost as the coach rumbled into life at the urging of the coachman's whip, and they were away.

Karkat picket himself up with a grunt and span around, in time to see Jacob attacking dirk savagely. The Peony blade was light on his feet and aggressive, and a little younger and more sprightly perhaps then Dirk. He slashed out with his dagger brutally and without warning. Dirk threw his left leg back and balanced his weight between his feet, rising up nearly onto his toes. With a twitch of his wrists his fighting dirk slid out of his right sleeve into his waiting hand and the billhooked knife into his left. He seemed to move with an easy slowness in his economy of movement, doing no more then he had to. He slashed his left-hand knife across almost lazily and slapped the attacking thrust out of the air. Jacob landed easily on the ball of his right foot and span with the momentum of the blocking slash, turning and driving his left knife behind him and toward Dirk's side. He moved like a dancer in effortless control of his body, but once more Dirk was ready, leaning backwards remarkably far onto his waiting back foot to evade the blow. It all happened in less time then it took Karkat to draw in a shocked breath.

This was the first time that he had seen Dirk fight against an opponent who could match him, and he now knew for certain that it was Jacob Peony that had wounded Dirk before. Whatever doubt he might have entertained was extinguished when he saw the manner of Jacob's attack; he would have hit Dirk in the precise place that he had been wounded the last time. Dirk grinned darkly and slashed his knives together noisily toward Jacob's face, making the man reflexively duck back.  
“You would try the same trick on me twice? You damned prig, that is a true insult to me!”  
“Insolence sits well with you Roses, I'll have to prune you back!”

Jacob danced forward in a complicated manoeuvre, turning this way and that as he presented one blade after another to Dirk's defences. Karkat unsheathed his own dagger but thought better of dashing in- the way Jacob moved, he was perfectly aware of his surroundings and Karkat had no doubt that if he put a foot wrong the Peony would skewer him just to prick Dirk's ire. He had been unable, in his heart, to leave Dirk alone but now he saw how truly helpless he was to really help.

He looked around himself frantically. It seemed inconceivable that no help was nearby, but what few pedestrians were passing had taken one look at the street duel that was unfolding and quickly ran away. He span around in a panic, there were moments to spare. Karkat realised that his only chance to be of any assistance was in finding some help, and he darted off toward the upper market as fast as his legs could carry him.

Dirk almost casually slashed at Jacob, trading each of Jacob's wild flurries with a calm thrust or a wary feint. He had made the mistake of underestimating his opponent once before and he would not do again. What began now was a process of studiously watching and testing, he disciplined himself and tempered his attacks with patience as he learned. All at once the pain in his side, which he had been ignoring thus far, flared as he twisted his upper body just a touch too far, and he felt something tear slightly and the immediate wet warmth of a bloody trickle down his skin. Jacob's knife tore his doublet and skidded over his mail shirt with a sickening screech of metal. A moment earlier and perhaps the point of the knife would have found purchase and stabbed through. With a gasp of pain Dirk shifted his weight and kicked his heel into Jacob's shin unexpectedly. The Peony cried out and backed off a step, buying a few moments of respite as the two men circled and glared balefully at each other.

Karkat ran down to the nearby entrance tot he upper market. It was an open archway in the high wall that surrounded the market which had in centuries past been a fortified position but was now just another of the ancient sites that dotted the city. Beyond the arch the marketplace was bustling- the fall of night did nothing to slow down the activities here and the night time people were out in force. Karkat burst onto the market and ran between brightly lit and gaily painted stalls, crying out at the top of his lungs. He felt someone grab at his shoulder and barged them away, he pushed through the crowd looking for a city guard or preferably a squad of them. To have an apparently mad troll racing through the refined upper market yelling and shoving at people was enough to make a scene. Karkat caught a flash of livery, and ran up to an annoyed looking guard wearing the city's colours.  
“A duel!” Karkat gasped, pointing behind him, “there's a fight! It's a duel! You have to help!”  
The man glanced around, he was accompanied by another human guard, and a troll guard who looked faintly embarrassed at the scene.  
“Easy now, calm down,” the guard patted his shoulder patronisingly, “why not start at the beginning, hey?”  
“It's a fight, the council- there's a Peony man, he wants to kill Dirk!”  
The guards looked at one another warily. This was sounding suspiciously like House business, and though the city guard was technically a neutral organisation that was separate to political matters, a certain amount of leeway toward the great houses was considered essential.

The troll guard nudged the human talking to Karkat, and pointed at the extravagant shirt Karkat wore.  
“Hey, that look familiar to you, sarge?”  
The guard sergeant took a moment to look Karkat over and whistled.  
“Boy,” he said softly, “how about you tell me where you got that shirt from?”  
“What? No- I-”

The guards were now circling him with the obvious pose of law men who had found someone small and probably criminal that they could deal with easily. Karkat knew that look, he had seen his fellow slaves beaten and abused by guards enough times to tell when it was coming. He almost panicked before he realised that the slave collar was invisible under his shirt at the moment. As far as the guards were concerned he could be anyone. He could even be important.

Karkat puffed out his chest and roared up at the guard sergeant before him with a voice of offended fury that he had never found in him before in his entire life.  
“Enough! If you won't enforce the laws of this city then I'll be on my way! I am a Rose, sir, and if you dislike my manner you may address your questions to my House!”  
The guards glanced at one another warily. It was one thing to question a troll boy who was causing trouble, but the houses were another matter and not to be taken lightly. Now Karkat was waving a piece of paper in the sergeant's face.  
“You see this! Look closer! See that seal on the bottom? That's the Conclave seal, and I am a Rose, that's where I've just come from!”  
Indeed the paper he was waving did bear the standard seal of the Conclave council, it was an agenda for the days' meetings that Karkat had been carrying around in his pocket for Rookfeather all day.

The troll guard leaned over and muttered something to his sergeant, who nodded.  
“Right then, little one. Where's all this trouble?”

Dirk and Jacob Peony fought back and forth across the street, crossing over and over the roadway as they went. They leapt and span, thrusting and parrying like lightning to a near standstill. Dirk was starting to feel the growing, burning ache in his side that told him his wound was definitely and angrily open, and he couldn't keep up the pace he had been pushing himself to for much longer. Jacob had received three cuts to his arms from Dirk, and a nasty wound from the tip of that billhook to his thigh that slowed him down. The two men were sweating profusely and in between bouts of frantic cutting and slashing they had insulted each other readily and fulsomely.

Their fight had only lasted a matter of minutes, but both men were now nearly spent, and the next mistake either made might well be their last. They stared at each other with the calm understanding and acceptance that their acquaintance would end only with the death of one or the other of them. They were interrupted by a shout and the sound of stamping feet marching toward them. Coming along the road from the market, Karkat led a contingent of guards who were obediently trotting behind him. The duellists were soon joined by the guards and the sergeant stepped forwards with his sword drawn.  
“All right lads,” he said smoothly, “you've had your fun, now how about you be about your way, hey?”  
Dirk looked down in shock at Karkat who was beaming proudly. Jacob Peony drew himself up and mopped his brow, favouring his bad leg slightly.  
“Well, friend Rose, it seems our business will have to wait another day,”   
“Indeed?” Dirk swallowed, “seems like a shame to put things off to later, wouldn't you say?” He grimaced dangerously and brandished his knives.  
“Gentlemen!” The sergeant raised his voice, respectfully but firmly, “I am sure you have both registered your complaint with the authorities and have license to duel... perhaps you might both produce your licenses?”  
The men glared at each other. A duel was not uncommon, nor forbidden, but there were rules to such matters and it was not done to simply brawl in the streets on a whim. They both knew that an unlicensed duel was no different, in the eyes of the law, to an attempted murder and treated no less harshly. Dirk seemed more then willing to accept that, and he was about to advance on Jacob when the Peony took up his blades and sheathed them with a nod.  
“It will not be said of the Peony House that we do not respect the laws. With your permission, gentlemen, I will depart.”  
The sergeant laid a restraining hand meaningfully on Dirk's shoulder and nodded, “as you say, sir. Good evening to you both, I see no need for the guard to be any further bother to you.”

Jacob Peony turned on his heel angrily and stalked off, leaving no doubt from his expression that this matter was not yet resolved. Dirk just stared at his back until he was around the corner.  
“Now then sirs, perhaps I could call for you a carriage? Wouldn't want you to get lost... on your way home.” The sergeant added the last part meaningfully. Dirk just grunted in acceptance.

As they were drawn back to the Rose House in a carriage, Dirk remained silent, nursing his side with one hand and staring out of the window. Karkat slowly came to the mounting realisation that he might not be well thanked for his interference.  
“Dirk,” he began, “I'm sorry for getting in the way.”  
“Mmm,”  
“I couldn't just watch it happen, I'm sorry.”  
“I know.”  
“You would have beaten him in the end, anyway.”  
Dirk closed his eyes and sighed. He stayed that way for a time and Karkat thought he had gone to sleep but after a few minutes he spoke again.  
“Perhaps not. I'm not back up to my full strength. I do think that he would have had me.”  
“Oh.”  
Dirk glanced at him with a wry half-smile.  
“I'm saying, boy, that you probably did just save my life again.”  
Karkat just smiled shyly and shrugged.  
“Mind you, I'll have to answer to lady Rose now. Maybe it would have been easier to just take a knife to the gut.”  
They both shared a laugh as the tension gradually defused. There would be hard questions to answer certainly, and recriminations from the Peonies for sure. For that short time in the carriage together, though, they were just two men of the Rose House, going home.


	16. Chapter 16

For all that Karkat and Dirk had bonded over their experiences, back in the Rose House the lady Rose took a far more dim view of the whole affair. Karkat was dispatched immediately to his high bedroom to await his fate, and as he scurried away he could hear behind him the very pointed, very displeased, tones of the lady Rose addressing Dirk. His own responses were dulled to mere bass rumbles by the distance; Karkat didn't hope for anything on his own behalf, but he hoped that Dirk would not be excoriated too thoroughly over their adventure.

Although the hour was very late indeed, Karkat found himself practically throbbing with excitement and he could not hope to sleep. He wriggled about under his blanket restlessly and thought back on the events of the evening. Dirk had been fighting for his life, and he had commanded- actually commanded- humans to attend to things, and had got his way. New thoughts and ideas were crackling through his mind like fireworks, each more intense then the last, each new revelation a bomb-burst in the middle of his consciousness. When he wore the colours of the Rose House, he was an extension of the House itself. That carried a certain weight in society. He was no longer merely an anonymous slave, he was an agent of an old and venerable institution. He was taken seriously. Karkat licked his lips nervously as he slowly and carefully built one conclusion on top of another. With infinite care he put together a theory which seemed like a living, growing thing in his mind that he was carefully tending and encouraging to grow. His thought was this- in time there may come a moment when he was no longer a slave at all. Not because luck or the fickle caprices of his human owners had conspired to deign him to be free but because he had worked for it, earned it, and even...

Karkat gritted his teeth, and his slender little fingers gripped around the cold brass ring attached to his collar.  
“Because,” he whispered just to hear it said aloud, just once, “because I took it for myself.”

There came a knock on his door and Karkat sat upright sharply, already blushing with guilt and shame at what he had dared to give voice to. He was half-way ready to beg forgiveness, to grovel and grind his forehead against the floorboards until he was told that it was enough. He managed to gather together the wherewithal to clasp his sheets around him and squeak non-committally.

Rookfeather advanced into the room, preceded by a lit candle holder he cradled on the crook of a gnarled ancient finger. He stared blearily into the room for a moment until he picked out Karkat and nodded.  
“Boy, you are awake?”  
“Yes, Master.”  
“I suppose you think that this has been quite an exciting evening, do you?”  
“I wouldn't know, Master. I was glad to see the Conclave.”  
“Were you glad to see Dirk near kill himself- again- in a duel? Hmm?”  
Karkat shivered involuntarily, “no, Master,”  
Rookfeather sighed, and walked across to the bed, sitting himself down on the edge with a creak.  
“You did the right thing, fetching help in the way that you did.”  
“Thank you, Master,”  
“And yet, when your Mistress called to you, I note that you seem to have ignored her to run after Dirk. That is quite a serious thing, Karkat.”  
Sat in the corner where the head of the bed met the walls, Karkat pulled the sheet tighter around him and paled. He had run away from his owner. He still had welts on his back from slaver-whips to remind him of the ultimate crime for a slave- to run.  
“Master...” he began, but he could not bring the words up to the top of his throat. Tears began falling freely.  
“Do you have anything to say, boy?”  
Whatever Karkat might have wanted to add, he could not. His voice was snatched away by fear and shame and, above all, the dread that he might be sold, or worse, and never again have his bed and his room and his sheet. He shook his head and a low moan escaped him.

In the depths of his misery it took Karkat a moment to feel a warm hand on his head, fingers pushing through his rough mop of hair. Rookfeather calmly stroked his head, waiting for the little moment to pass. In the darkness and under all that hair Karkat looked like a blurry black mass to him, but he could just about perceive twin moist gleams in the candle light, regarding him warily.  
“Now, Karkat, I want to tell you some things that you might find to be... difficult. You must pay attention to me now, boy.”  
Karkat nodded mutely, still shocked.

“The first thing I must tell you is this,” began Rookfeather smoothly, “you have disobeyed your mistress, and that is something which will not be tolerated. I have been instructed to discipline you most severely on the matter.”  
“Yes, Master,” it was about all that Karkat could manage to say though the tears.  
“The second thing I must tell you is this. I am very glad that you disobeyed our lady, because you saved the life of Dirk, who is very important to this house. Were we to lose him, we would not find his like again.”  
Karkat swallowed thickly. He was beginning to sense something, it was a human thing that was alien to him, but he had seen it before in other humans. They would sometimes think one thing, and at the same time think the opposite of that thing all at once. Another strangeness of the humans, it seemed to him that their minds were everywhere at once and entirely able to hold all kinds of contradictory notions at once.  
“Master?”  
“Karkat. Hm. This is not easy for me to say, but try to understand me. I must be very upset with you, that is my duty to my lady, and the proper thing. But I am also pleased that you chose to do what you did, and I would hope that you would do the same thing in the future. Of course, I would ever instruct you to disobey the lady Rose, never. But... all the same, I hope that you might do anyway, if it were in such a good cause.”  
“Master. Um...”  
“Yes?”  
“Am I to be punished, Master?”  
Rookfeather stood up, and in the dim candle light Karkat thought that he could just about see the collection of wrinkles and lines about his mouth arrange themselves into a smile.  
“Of course, Karkat. In fact you have been most severely reprimanded.”  
“I have, Master?”  
“Indeed. And I imagine that you are most severely chastened.”  
“I... believe so, Master.”  
“Good. Then it is over and done with.”

Rookfeather moved to the door, but paused as he got there. He was illuminated fully by the fulgent glow of the candle as he turned once more to Karkat to speak.  
“Dirk was a knight, once, and there's a part of him that believes he should have ended that life honourably, with a good death. There is a part of him that still wants that good death. I would very much appreciate it, if a clever and compassionate person were to stay close to him and see that he does not stray down that path.”  
“I hope so too, Master.”  
One of those twin gleams watching Rookfeather dimmed for just a moment, the merest suggestion of a wink. The old man nodded stiffly and departed, leaving Karkat to wallow in a rising whirlpool of new and disorienting ideas.

A new morning chased away the last cobwebs of sleep and dreaming worries, and the Rose House began adjusting to a new and changed normality. Following the first meeting of the Conclave things had been set in motion which demanded immediate action. The Conclave itself would comprise several of these meetings spaced out over a period of a week or, in exceptional circumstances, longer. Between each sitting of the council came a recess for private gatherings, the transcription of various new contracts, and opportunities for the Houses to retrench and regather themselves.

In the library Rookfeather was intensely busy with writing out various letters, contracts and sundry legal documents while runners came in and out of the house all through the day bearing completed documents back and forth between scribe-houses where they would be scrupulously duplicated over and over, and from thence to various storage halls and archives to become a formal, and irrevocable, part of history. In theory, any interested party could approach one of the halls of record and, on demand, peruse the entire documented contractual and legal history of all of the Houses, both great and small.

Karkat kept his head down and saw to the small tasks and chores with which he could full up a thousand and more days like this one. After lunch time he was summoned by Rookfeather, who unceremoniously dropped a heavy leather satchel into his arms.  
“Boy! These are to go to the hall of records, and be careful. These are the more sensitive documents which need to be filed away after the last sitting of Conclave, and I don't trust them to a runner.”  
“You want me to take them, Master?”  
“Yes, but you won't be alone. Go and find Dirk, and some footmen. I want this done immediately, do you understand? Dirk will know how many to bring, just see to it that it is done and done safely.”  
“ I understand, Master! I will, Master!”

Karkat raced away to find Dirk. In the event, the man was in the great hall, practising with his knives again. The various cuts he had received in his interrupted duel were all bandaged tightly, and none had been severe enough to keep him in bed. When Karkat explained his mission, Dirk grinned darkly.  
“Very well! We'll go now, and be back in time for midafternoon tea. Come along boy, I hope you have your dagger.”  
“Um, but,”  
“Yes? Spit it out.”  
“Rookfeather said. You're to bring along footmen with us, for safety. Rookfeather said so.”  
“Oh he did, did he?”  
“Yes, Master,”  
“Ah!”  
“Yes, Dirk,” Karkat corrected himself.  
“Well Rookfeather is a flustered old black hen who doesn't know how to let well enough be. I am the one who decides how best to see to the safety of this House, and we'll be safer travelling as a pair then attracting attention in a group. Come!”  
Karkat could not quite stifle a giggle at the description of Rookfeather as a big black hen, and followed Dirk without complaining.

The pair of them made their way out of the environs of the Rose House, Dirk in his white cape over his usual mail shirt and Karkat similarly attired in a grey rain cloak. They made their way on foot, to all intents and purposes an ordinary citizen with his attendant troll going about a matter of business in the human quarter. They had made their way past the Serpentine Stair and were well on their way to the hall of records before they encountered anyone.

They were walking along the high street leading from the Low Market, where the roadway is elevated at the top of a long earthwork, bordered on one side by black house faces and on the other side by a steep descent that leads to the river running alongside and some twenty feet below the level of the road. Dirk stood on the edge, taking the air for a moment while Karkat adjusted a loose shoe. There was a pathway down the descent to the riverside and Dirk indicated that they would go that way. Almost as soon as they were below the level of the roadway a deadening silence seemed to descend upon them, an artefact of the way that the noise from above was baffled by the sudden drop and the still surface of the river. As they walked along the paved tow path along the river their heels clicked sharply on the stones and filled the air. Karkat fancied that aside from their footsteps all he could hear in the world was his own breathing. Their path had been sufficiently tricky that he was a little winded and Dirk was in no particular mood to talk, and so they both saved their breath.

The river wound lazily in a loose curve that led into a great wide archway forming a stone bridge over the water. The tunnel thus formed was not long enough to cast deep shadows but there was a darker place under the bridge beyond which the tow path seemed to glow attractively in the afternoon light. Karkat looked up and squinted, then nudged Dirk on the arm.  
“Yes,” Dirk replied, “I see him.”

Past the bridge a man stood. In the bright, wavering light beyond the shadow of the bridge he seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He wore a bright orange cloak, and in the bright light his ash-blond hair flared vividly around his head like a halo. Where his face was pale and wan, his eyes were instead great black orbs, unspeakably large and implacable. Dirk advanced with a wary gait, and Karkat could see from the way that he held himself that his knives, strapped to the insides of his forearms, were ready. For all that he was wary, Dirk was obviously intent on meeting this stranger head on, and Karkat resolved that he would go too and be ready. They walked underneath the bridge while the stranger waited patiently and regarded them.

As they came close, more details could be resolved. The great black eyes were in fact an illusion caused by the unusually large, dark, eyeglasses he wore. The glass was smoked until it was near black, and absorbed his eyes in shadows. Where his cloak was drawn together at his left shoulder, the folds were gathered together by an ornate rust-coloured broach in a circular spiralling design like the disc that was embroidered onto the similarly orange blouse that Karkat had been given.

As they came close enough to speak plainly, the stranger held up one red-gloved hand, and they came to a stop. From under his cloak was briefly visible a sword, which from the size of the scabbard had an unusually wide blade. The stranger spoke.

“Dirk.”  
Karkat looked up, and saw the muscular cords at Dirk's throat bunch as the man swallowed tensely.  
“David.”  
“You look well enough,” the stranger, who had been called David, inclined his head slightly to regard Karkat with that blank expression with what seemed to him uncomfortably like vast staring eyes of pure black. “Who is this?”  
“Does it matter to you?” Dirk spoke very softly, more so then Karkat had heard from the brusque human before.  
“No it does not. I won't insult your intelligence by pretending that we're meeting by accident.”  
“You've grown,” Dirk began, but David gave him a look of irritation and interrupted.  
“Dirk. The Rose House has made some intriguingly astute manoeuvres of late, and it would seem that fortune has blessed the House in several ways at once.”  
“Is that so?”  
“And you have been duelling with Jacob of the Peonies,”  
“I have, have I now?”  
“Dirk,” the man took a half-step closer, but seemed to be held back by an unwillingness to be any closer then that, “the Rose House is slowly departing into history. Maybe it would be best to let that happen peacefully.”  
“Are you offering me a warning?”  
“An observation. The things of the past should stay in the past, and there is no benefit in trying to bring them back The Rose House will not prosper if the Roses are once again going where they once went.”  
“You've taken pains to give me a warning, then.”  
“Hardly pains to speak a few words in passing.”  
“We're hardly passing, though. You always did have a way of appearing at exactly the right time.”  
David stiffened, and moved to turn aside.  
“I've said my piece,” he announced coldly, “do as you will, as I shall.”

With that, he stalked past them at a brisk pace and walked off along the tow path. Karkat watched him go, and slowly exhaled. He pulled his hand away from his belly, where it had been gripping tensely onto his dagger.  
“Dirk,” he said slowly, “what just happened?”  
“Remember the day, boy,” Dirk sighed softly, “you just met a Terpsichorean knight.”  
Karkat put together what Dirk had told him, in the cold of the snow, after dispatching the assassin that had been sent by the Prince of Waves.  
“Your brother?”  
“Yes, once he was.”

Dirk started walking. Karkat watched him warily, and thought over what he had seen. Dirk had not been afraid, exactly, but there was a powerful emotion that gripped him as he had spoken to his brother. There was something between them, something horrible that had apparently led Dirk to leave his knightly order. Karkat drew up his strength and resolve, and jogged up beside Dirk.  
“You quarrelled with him?”  
Dirk looked down, “you're talkative today. That is hardly your finest quality.”  
Karkat changed tack, “how can you protect me if you are to be accosted by unhappy knights on the road? I shall walk back to the Rose House and ask for someone else to see to my safety.”  
“What do you say?”  
“I say what I say! If you cannot walk me from one place to another without a Terpsichorean knight stopping us in the road, then I cannot trust you to safeguard these papers.”  
“You yapping dog! You vicious little worm, how dare you?”  
“I will go back! I'll explain what has happened and tell Rookfeather. I will!”  
“You vicious little blackguard!”  
“Will you tell me, then?”

They stared each other down, for a moment. Karkat was breathing raggedly with fear, but he knew, somehow, that there was a time to press ahead just as there was a time to withdraw. Something in him pushed him on, and told him to press Dirk on this here and now. In an odd way he felt that Dirk needed to be told he had no choice, or else he would never speak.

“You little snip. You're not going anywhere! He won't be back, you needn't worry.”  
“Who was that man? What is between you?”  
Dirk moaned and kicked a pebble into the river, running a hand through his hair in aggravation.  
“If I tell you, will you be quiet?”  
“I swear that I will!”  
“And no going to Rookfeather?”  
“Um,”  
“Swear that too!”  
“All right, I swear that too. I will say nothing, Dirk.”  
“My brother knight, and my brother in flesh, David. We were both Terpsichorean knights in another life.”  
“Why did you leave, Dirk? Why does he speak like he hates you?”  
Dirk moaned again and squatted down, clasping his head as he gathered his thoughts.  
“He does hate me, as well he might. There is bad blood between us.”  
“Yes?”  
“Yes. Very well, you might as well know it, boy. There came a duel that David was to fight, and he was not ready for it. He would have been smashed, cut to pieces, murdered. So I went ahead of him, before the appointed time. I picked a quarrel with his opponent, and fought with him.”  
“What happened?”  
“What do you think? I am still alive. But I could no longer call myself a knight. I had besmirched the honour of my brother, in the eyes of the order. I had belittled him by fighting his battle for him against his wishes, and duelled without proper cause or license. The cost of it was my cloak and my blade, and I left in disgrace. But for all my shame in leaving, I left more then enough portion of shame for David in staying behind after me.”  
“So, he hates you?”  
“Aye, I do believe that he does. His honour can only be truly avenged when he justly strikes me down for my impudence, and yet he cannot. Yes, I'd have a hate for a man who did such a thing to me.”

Karkat thought this over for a time, while Dirk stayed, rock-still, lost in his own misery. Finally he reached out and touched Dirk's sleeve.  
“I'm going,” he said, “you have to protect me.”  
Dirk winced, and let out a little chuckle.  
“Yes, of course. Come on, boy.”  
“There's not far to go. We will be home in time for midafternoon tea, remember?”  
“I suppose there's that, yes. Just remember- not a word to Rookfeather.”  
“Yes. After all, he'll only worry.”  
“That he will.”  
“Like a great big black hen!”  
Dirk laughed softly and ruffled Karkat's hair, and together they proceeded along the tow path while beside them the river whispered and cackled without a care.


	17. Chapter 17

Rookfeather had cares. Worries had written themselves across his brow for years in a deep, flowing script across his skin. Since the beginning of the Conclave his concerns and responsibilities had multiplied rapidly as a new life and energy had entered the Rose House. Along with all the deals that were being brokered in the ongoing Conclave sessions came a great deal of preparation and work. The various outbuildings and even parts of the House itself had been pressed into new service as temporary storehouses and staging posts. Now, multifarious goods were constantly moving in and out of the grounds almost around the clock as the various deals that the lady Rose had struck began coming into effect. From being a declining power seeing out a few final days, the Rose House had become an engine of commerce almost overnight and the change was immediate and apparent in both the activity of the House and the faces of the Roses living and working there. The footmen, the attendants and the collier, the butler and the various kitchen lads all seemed to have a gleaming freshness about them as if they were finally coming awake after a long and dreamless sleep.

Windows had been thrown open to admit fresh air and curtains drawn wide to let in the sun. Hallways and passageways that had lain dormant and dusty now thundered anew with the passing of feet, always in a hurry to get somewhere and do something. This should have been a moment of triumph for Rookfeather. He had been the de facto head of the household for decades, as the last lady Rose declined and met her fate and then as the young lady Rose gradually grew into her own power. He had been, more then any other individual, instrumental in holding the House together and under his careful stewardship the Rose House had survived one of the darkest periods in its' history. Now at last his work was bearing fruit and his long care and patient strength was being rewarded. And yet Rookfeather paused and ran a trembling hand over the crumbling material of an ancient tapestry hanging on a corridor wall, and felt a tension running through him. He looked up at the hundreds of paintings of the hundreds of Roses past, and saw something accusing in their collective gaze. He had long felt that there was something not right in the House, but for the longest time he had put that feeling down to the loss of stratus and power that the House had endured. Now, he no longer had that excuse. In the space of one Conclave the Rose House had gone from being the weakest of the great Houses to a resurgent and rising force, and it did nothing to diminish his dread. Whatever the source and cause of his discomfort, the social position of the Rose House had no effect upon it.  
“Why do I feel this way,” he said aloud to himself, or perhaps to the paintings, “what am I not seeing? What have I not noticed?”  
“Rookfeather?”  
He turned, and the lady Rose was stood in the corridor behind him, outlined in blazing sunlight from the high bay window beside her that lit her hair like flames and made her white linen shift dress blaze. She smiled as Rookfeather gave a curt bow.  
“Your pardon, my lady. I was just musing to myself.”  
“Musing on nothing worrisome, I hope.”  
“Nothing that I would permit to trouble my lady. How may I be of service?”  
“I wanted to seek your advice, as it happens.”  
“Of course,” Rookfeather inclined his head respectfully, “I am at your disposal, my lady.”

The expression of lady Rose softened, and for a moment Rookfeather saw the girl he has assiduously raised for twenty years and more. She had looked up to him when he gave her lessons in politics and science and philosophy with just such a look, that seemed to suggest an absolute faith that he had the answer to any conceivable question. It had been a long time since Rookfeather had indulged himself to believe that happy fiction. He glanced around to see that they were alone and stepped into the pool of sunlight with her, though the light did little to illuminate his habitually dark clothing or the fringe of black feathers that adorned his robes.  
“My lady? You are the one who seems to be troubled, if I may be so bold.”  
“Oh, my Rookfeather,” she placed a hand tenderly on his arm in a way that made him feel like a younger man then he was, “I am troubled. Will you let me hear your wise words again, and tell me what it is I am to do?”  
“You are long grown past any particular need of my counsel I am sure, my lady.”  
“Please, let us speak as we used to speak.”  
Rookfeather wrinkled his brow in concern, and patted her hand. He nodded his head and walked with her to the small drawing room adjoining the main hall. In years past, the men of the House had used it as an unofficial smoking room, to enjoy brandies and cigars after a meal. Under the rule of the current lady Rose it was converted into something of a private study where she could find enough peace and quiet to get work done while still being as close as she wanted to the main areas of the house. The lady Rose stood a little awkwardly in the middle of the room now, her hands wringing fitfully, and she invited Rookfeather to come in and sit in one of the high-backed leather armchairs.

“Rookfeather, I need to talk to you about something.”  
In response, Rookfeather just looked at her with a blank, questioning expression.  
“You and Karkat, you have become... close? Yes?”  
“I suppose I have become fond of the boy, for all his deficiencies. Yes, yes I would say I am quite fond of him now. I believe he has settled in well.”  
“And he feels similarly towards you, with such warm affection?”  
“I wouldn't like to presume, but I believe so. He has been a remarkably diligent student, and quite loyal too.”  
The lady Rose seemed all the more troubled, as though she were picking her words very carefully.  
“My Lady,” Rookfeather ventured, “has Karkat done something to aggrieve you? I could certainly set the boy straight.”  
“No, no, nothing like that,” she chuckled under her breath and fiddled with the end of an immaculate sleeve, “quite the opposite if anything.”  
“I see.”  
“Rookfeather... if you wanted- if you were to ask Karkat to do something, do you think that he would do it, for you?”  
This was all making Rookfeather entirely uncomfortable. “My lady, if I may venture a point of fact, Karkat is, ultimately, your slave. If you wish something of him then it is his command to obey.”  
“This is something I cannot command, though. I can't. He has to... give it back to me of his own accord.”  
That about did it for Rookfeather. Insofar as he was a loyal servant to the Rose House he was also the man who had, almost single handedly, raised the lady Rose from girl to woman and he had seen her through all of the emotional trials and tribulations involved. He felt now more then ever that his charge, his lady Rose, needed him to be candid and straightforward with her.  
“Lady Rose, I insist that you sit down, now, and tell me what it is that you need from Karkat.”  
“You insist?”  
“I do. Yes, I do insist. You wanted my counsel and well I might give it to you, but I can do nothing for you if you do not trust me with the truth now- and all of it.”

She sighed and sat opposite him. In the more dim light of the study he fancied that she was his little girl all over again.  
“Karkat is a special one,” she began haltingly, “I knew it as soon as I saw him. He has a way of just... knowing things.”  
“I have seen that for myself,”  
“When he went to lord Gamsie for me, I knew that he would succeed and I gave him everything he needed to do so. But in return I promised him anything he wished, and he asked for something that I did not expect that he would ask for.”  
“He took something from you my Lady?”  
“Worse then that. I gave it to him, willingly, and now it belongs to him alone until he relinquishes it of his own accord. And, perhaps not even then.”  
“What did he ask of you?”  
“He asked me for my ink well.”  
“I fail to see the difficulty in that,” Rookfeather said in a tone that slowly became more accusing as the pieces of a dark, foreboding dread fell into place, “unless of course there were some kind of special significance to this item.”  
“Would he give it back if you asked him?”  
“Lady Rose, what have you done? What have you done!”  
“You must answer me!”

At this Rookfeather surged to his feet, and in the gloom of the study he was all of a sudden become a terrifying figure. His robes flowed and settled around him in long, liquid shadows and he fairly bristled with fury.  
“No!” Rookfeather extended a bony hand, and the lady Rose sank back in her chair reflexively, “now you shall answer to me, child! What have you done?”  
The lady Rose clasped her hands over her eyes, and just shook her head.  
“The deals,” Rookfeather hissed, “the clever strategies, the prescient way you knew what was to come... how did I not see it? How of all people did I not see?”  
“I have brought this House back to the very cusp of greatness!”  
“You have brought us to the edge of a black precipice, you foolish child! You didn't see your mother. You never saw her eyes, toward the end. But I did! I saw them! I promised myself that I would shield you from that!”  
“It isn't like how it was back then! This is different!”  
“Different, is it my lady? How like her you sound, how very, very like her!”  
“Don't say that!”  
“Then tell me that it is just an ordinary ink well! Tell me that it is a harmless frippery that I might cast into the river and never think of again! Then I will hear that this is different!”

He glared down at her coldly. She had never seen him so very incensed and, she now realised, so very afraid. Even in the hardest of times Rookfeather had always maintained a calm equanimity but not now- he was terrified and that in turn drove an iron spike of fear down into her heart.  
“I am sorry,” she whispered, “I promise you though, I am in control. It is not like how things were with my mother.”  
“Enough! We have to see about repairing the damage that is done already, before we consider what more is to come! How long has Karkat had it?”  
“Not... not too long. I thought I would have it back from him in time, and that I could put my plans back on their path,”  
Rookfeather paused, as still as bronze.  
“Plans. What else have you set in motion?”  
“Little else remains of my foresight, that is why I especially need to get the ink well back!”  
“Then we are in the greatest danger, for it is now that the forces you have unleashed are about to snap their tether. Great heavens and merciful gods, girl! Have you no fear? What you have set in motion will not simply come to a halt, those forces will plunge on and on, this is how things went the last time. It is all happening again!”  
“I swear, if I can only get it back-”  
“Oh-h-h too late for that, I fear. Smoke cannot be enticed back into the fire from whence it came.”

Rookfeather slumped back and found his chair again. He now wouldn't look at the lady Rose directly, and the two of them wrestled with their thoughts before speaking again. Suddenly Rookfeather's head snapped up and he cried out.  
“Dirk! Does he know?”  
“Dirk? No, I have not said anything, he could not know.”  
“Are you certain? Can you be?”  
“What are you thinking?”  
“He was a Terpsichorian knight! If he found out, can you imagine what he would do?”  
“Dirk would never harm me, I know that.”  
“Perhaps he would have regrets, my lady, but would those come only after he had carved out your heart?”  
“You think he would do that?”  
“If he did, I fancy the knights would welcome him back with open arms. How much a temptation would that be, I wonder?”  
“I promise you, Dirk would not harm me.”  
“Do you know that? Or were you... told it? By them?”  
“Do not ask me that.”

Rookfeather just shook his head.  
“To answer your question from earlier, I believe Karkat would do what he is told. But if his instinct led him to take that thing from you, then I am more inclined to thank him for it!”  
“Will you help me, or not? Am I alone?”  
Rookfeather shuddered, noticeably. “I could not save your mother, but damned if I won't save you my lady.”  
At that small fragment of sympathy, the lady Rose smiled and her pale face seemed to glow with the purest joy. It had been too long since Rookfeather had seen her smile so honestly.  
“For now,” he said gravely, “we have to find the boy. Things will become unbalanced soon, that is sure.”  
“What do you think is coming?”  
“Think you this, my lady, that you have pulled a great stone to the top of a hill, and now the stone is released and where will it fall, and what will be crushed on the way down? That is what I fear is coming.”  
“Karkat has Dirk with him, he will be home soon.”  
“I hope so. Come, we will search through the boy's room.”  
“I told you, unless he relinquishes it, then it remains his.”  
“Yes, my lady, but if we do not find it then I would wager he has it with him, and if so then he will be in the most dread danger.”


End file.
